


Build a Rocket, Boys!

by feroxargentea



Category: due South
Genre: Action/Adventure, First Time, M/M, Mounties in Spaaaaaace, Romance, Space AU, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-06-26 11:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: Androids are going missing on the giant spaceship Chicago! A Mountie and a space cop team up to investigate why, and to find their friend before it’s too late.





	Build a Rocket, Boys!

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the due South/Canadian Six Degrees Big Bang 2018. With thanks to my lovely betas cj2017 and alltoseek for doing their best to untangle my worldbuilding, to the dS-c6d Big Bang community for cheerleading, and to mific for the [gorgeous artwork](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161251).

 

 **_Fraser: When I first came to Chicago, I felt as though I was from another planet._ **  
**_Ray: Which you are.  
_ _Fraser: Which I have come to accept._**

**—Call of the Wild part 2**

* * *

 

“Ah! Ray!”

His voice is warm and fond, lower than I was expecting, and full of love for a guy who’s not me.

“Fraser! Buddy!” I stride over and fling my arms round him. “You have a good trip in from the Northwest Areas?”

He pulls away, staring at me—staring openly like it doesn’t even matter, like he doesn’t care that the whole damn bullpen is side-eyeing us. Not good, _not_ good, and what the hell has Welsh told him?

He takes a sharp step back, stiffening up like he’s got the full Colonial Regulations up his ass. Maybe the hug was overkill? I snoozed my way through Cultural Sensitivity 101 along with the rest of 2188’s intake, but a half-remembered scrap crawls up from my memory: the instructor telling us in weary tones that _citizens of the Outer Colonies might react negatively to personal contact._ Fraser looks like I just kicked his grandmother in the head. Okay, no more hugging of the Mountie. Check.

“I’m sorry, but there seems to be some sort of misunderstanding,” he says. “I’m looking for Ray Vecchio. Raymond Vecchio, the detective.”

“Uh-huh. You talked to Welsh, right?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you about,” I wave a hand in front of my face, “the thing with the thing?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good, so we’re square.” I match Fraser’s glare, daring him to bring up the whole acid/face deal in front of everyone. He doesn’t. Wham, two-nil to Cultural Sensitivity. Instead he takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulders. He’s fully bio, so they told me, but he has more right angles than the squarest mech on the grid.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” he says, all slow and patient, as though I’m some unglued toddler calling him Dadda at a first grade meet’n’greet, “but, facial remodeling notwithstanding, I am very confident that you and I have never met. Now, my name is Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I first became involved with the Chicago Police Department whilst on the trail of the killers of my father, in the company of the person for whom I am currently looking: one Raymond Vecchio, detective first grade, Chicago PD.”

I flip open my badge, smacking it until the holo flares into life. Mad-eyed skinny guy, hungover as hell: it’s me in the not-so-flesh.

“Raymond Vecchio, detective first grade, Chicago PD,” I say. “Everyone here knows who I am, Fraser. How about you?”

And that’s when the station explodes.

 

* * *

 

I wake up seeing red. A lot of red. I’ve got a faceful of Mountie jacket and up close it’s blinding. For a moment I wonder whether the bomb’s killed Fraser and I’m lying here trapped under his corpse, but then I feel him cough. He shoves the fallen sheet of paneling off us and gets to his feet.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

I blink at the mess scattered across the bullpen. “Uh…”

“Good,” he says, and he’s gone, scrambling through the hole in the partition that wasn’t there a minute ago. I shake my head to clear the tinnitus but then realize it’s not in my head, it’s the fire alarm wailing. On the other side of the gap an entire section of cladding’s gone up in flames. The ducts over my desk have been ripped loose, too, and the water pipe has burst, sparking a rain of fire from the shorted wires.

“Vecchio!” Lieutenant Welsh bellows, cutting across the siren’s shriek. “Get your ass over here!” Through the haze of smoke I spot him by the main hatch, hurrying the last of the public out of the station. I point at the shattered partition.

“Nah, I gotta get the Mountie! Don’t let them seal the airlock yet!”

He yells something in response, but I’m already moving, climbing through the bomb-damaged bulkhead, trying to dodge the flames. Fraser’s standing by the staff lockers at the far end, his back to me and his hands held wide. For a second or two I don’t get why, but then I spot the young woman facing him, knife in hand, crouched to spring.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Fraser is saying calmly, as if he’s not trapped in a burning station on countdown to fire-lock. “Your explosive device hasn’t caused any casualties yet, and it wouldn’t be in your best interests to exacerbate the situation. Now, my name is Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police—”

The woman hesitates. “Royal _what?”_

“Outer Colonies, Northwest Sector,” I interrupt, skirting Fraser to approach her from the side. “Still counts as police, so _drop the knife!”_

Her gaze flicks to mine, and I reach for my stun-gun just as Fraser takes a step toward her. She gasps and raises the knife, maybe to hand it over, maybe to take a lunge at him. I never work out which, because right then the partition gives a warning creak and starts to fall.

I sprint forward, cursing, but the panel wavers and collapses in on itself, knocking the woman to the deck. Fraser and I rush to grab her as several ceiling panels come crashing down too, trapping her under the burning wadding.

“We don’t have time for this!” I shout, trying to beat out the flames and drag the unconscious woman free at the same time. “We gotta get out of here before they vent it!”

Fraser lugs the heaviest panel aside and grasps her other arm. “Ready? One, two, three,” he grunts, and we start hauling her toward the main hatchway. It’s slow going, across a deck littered with obstacles. When we reach the broken partition it takes all our efforts to maneuver her through, with Fraser pulling at one end and me shoving and swearing at the other. I barely have enough strength left to lever the hatch open, but the evac siren’s reaching its crescendo and we’re running out of time. We drag the woman through the hatchway and dump her in the passage just as the airlock slams shut behind us.

I slump down with my back to it, gasping. Behind me, I can hear the roar of the fire-control vacuum as it sucks the air from the sealed subsection.

Welsh comes running, but he slows down when he sees what state the woman’s in: blackened and motionless, with a bloody trail leading back toward the hatchway.

“Constable Fraser?” he asks. “Is she…”

Fraser’s crouched down with his ear to the woman’s chest, but he sits up again, shaking his head. Welsh curses and turns away, shouting into his comm. He’s calling a med crew, but it’s too late for our bomber. I’m guessing it was too late the minute the ceiling caved in on her.

“Damn,” I mutter, wiping soot from my watering eyes. It’s been months since the last IED on the Chicago. Six months at least. We had a spate of them last year, but we’ve got the perps safely penned in lockup, and besides, the Titan Separatists ditched their bombing campaign when they signed up to the peace negotiations. It doesn’t make sense for them to have started up again, not the way public opinion’s shifted.

I shuffle over to the woman and check her jacket and pants, but she doesn’t have any handy membership cards or extremist flyers tucked away anywhere. No ID at all, and she doesn’t look familiar.

“Nothing on her,” I tell Fraser, who sighs and straightens the woman’s jacket. “What was she doing when you found her?”

“Breaking into the staff lockers, it would appear. Given the jeopardy of the situation, I have to wonder whether that was her real objective and the bomb was used simply as distraction.” He takes something from his own pocket, something shiny that catches the light. It’s a CPD badge with its holo disabled.

“Hey, gimme that!” I say. “That’s CPD property.”

He frowns at me. “No, it’s _Ray’s_ property. This young lady was going through what I assume was his locker.”

I scoot over and examine the badge. Vecchio’s been gone two months, so maybe it’s not disabled, maybe it’s just out of juice after sitting around that long.

“Huh. You get anything else from there?”

“Only these.” Fraser shows me a small comm and a bag of unidentifiable, mold-coated snacks, which he sniffs and raises to his mouth.

“Eww, what are you—god, don’t _lick_ those! Give them here!”

He raises an eyebrow but does as he’s told, and I toss the bag into the nearest recyc. Vecchio’s comm I tuck into my back pocket for later examination. I don’t want anyone getting hold of it and figuring out there are two of us. Then I lay my jacket over the bomber, for no better reason than that she’s starting to go cold and the thought is making me shiver, and I sit back down and wait. Being a cop is ninety percent waiting. I wasn’t born with the patience gene, but I walked a beat for six years, and practice breeds resignation.

By the time the med techs have declared the poor kid dead on scene and carted her off to the morgue, rush hour is over and most of the Two-Seven’s staff have headed home. Lucky them. I have to stay until Welsh clears me to leave, and he’s still on the phone to IA.

The gangway decking is killing my ass, so I look around for somewhere more comfortable. The fire’s out by now and the airlocks have been unsealed, but it’s going to take a while for Bomb Squad to check the bullpen. They’ve already cleared the undamaged lock-up and interview rooms in B-section across the gangway, though, so I herd Fraser into an empty interview room and thunk down into one of its sticky plastic chairs.

“Don’t worry, none of this was your fault,” I tell him. “CCTV will back us up on that, assuming the feeds weren’t fried.”

“I’m aware of that.” He sets the other chair exactly square to the table and sits across from me. “Legally, I don’t believe our actions can be faulted, despite our failure to save that unfortunate young woman’s life. I gather you didn’t recognize her?”

“Nope, no clue. The medical examiner will run her biometrics if we haven’t ID’d her by then.”

“I see. Then perhaps you could at least tell me who _you_ are.”

I double-check my comm isn’t transmitting. “What, you get knocked on the head too?”

“Not to my knowledge, no,” he says, running an exploratory hand over his hair. “And you never told me who you are.”

“Ah christ, not this again.” Sagging down onto the table, I rest my head on my arms, huffing at the specks of cladding that fall from my own hair. The screen in the corner emits a tiny peep as it blinks from 18:59 to 19:00, two hours past clocking-out time. “I’m Ray, okay? Ray, Ray, Ray. Go talk to Welsh again, or go home, I don’t care which. We done here?”

Fraser doesn’t reply and I don’t look up. He might be my shiny new problem nine till five, but I don’t gotta deal with stubborn Colonials when I’m off the clock. Instead I close my eyes, shifting my wrist until the neural port stops digging into my cheek. Home sounds great, or I could just stay here and never move again; that’d work too. The station is quiet now, peaceful, and my head feels as heavy as a real mech’s. I’m at least fifty percent gone. All I have to do is let myself drift and I could doze forever. Just relaaaaax…

“What— _OW!”_

I jerk back, yanking my hand away from the table. Something just touched it: a soft, warm wetness, followed by a weird tingling sensation and then a shock, a real electric shock. I rub my knuckle and glare at Fraser, who’s sitting back in his chair again, the picture of innocence, as if he didn’t just _lick my hand_ and then zap me into the bargain.

“What the hell was that?” I demand.

“What?”

I give him my best Bad Cop stare. The licking is so weird I’m gonna pretend it didn’t happen, but electrocution is way over the line.

“Come on, Fraser, I saw it! The thing you just pocketed, what was that?”

His mouth twists in reluctance and it’s obvious he’s thinking about lying. Then he sighs and shakes a tiny electronic device out of his sleeve and onto the table. It’s low-tech, nothing more than a thumbnail screen and a couple of trailing wires. I squint at it, keeping my hands well away.

“It’s an improvised bioelectrical impedance meter,” he says. “Don’t worry, the current it emits is entirely harmless. Taking into account your body mass and habitus”—he tips his head, his gaze running speculatively up and down my frame, and I automatically sit up straighter—“and subtracting the effect of using my own body as the second electrode, your conductivity level would suggest a water content of approximately sixty-five percent and a fat content of fifteen percent.”

I try to pin him with another scowl but I can’t help breaking off to glance at my belly: no new percentage there, as far as I can tell. “Uh…is that good or what?”

“It’s roughly what I would have predicted for a lean, healthy male of your age, yes. What it does _not_ suggest is the presence of a metal endoskeleton or indeed metallic components of any sort. It is simply not possible, therefore, for you to be the person you’re claiming to be.”

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, _damn_ it. I try to remember any of what I failed to learn in science class, although I’m pretty sure I’m onto a loser here with Mr. Improvises-his-medical-apparatus-from-wire-and-his-own-tongue.

“Yeah,” I say, “but maybe I’m carbon fiber instead of metal.”

“You’re not. You’re human, bio through and through. So who—”

Grabbing his fist where he’s holding the body-fat widget, I squeeze it so hard that he cuts off with a squeak. I scan the room: nothing’s out of place, as far as I can tell, but if someone can plant a bomb in here, they can plant a bug.

“Not here, okay?” I hiss. “I got a place. Just follow me.”

 

* * *

 

The nearest Tube stop is only a couple of minutes from the station, and I’m almost through the barriers when I notice Fraser’s stopped in front of his turnstile, with a bunch of people backed up behind him, muttering and shoving. I tug him away into the dead space at the side of the portal.

“Forgot your token?” I ask, digging in my pants pocket. “Here, have a spare.”

He stares at it, then at me.

“Tube token,” I say, loudly and slowly. “Put it in the slot like you did before. Okay?”

“Before?”

It’s my turn to stare. “Fraser, tell me you took the Tube here.”

“Ah,” he says, shifting guiltily from one foot to the other. His boots might be polished to a mirror sheen but they’re also worn thin on the soles. “Well, the entire spacehub is only twelve kilometers from end to end, so it hardly seemed necessary to resort to public transport.”

“Do I look like a health freak to you? Take the damn token.”

Fraser takes it like an obedient Mountie and doesn’t make any smart remarks about how ancient the tech is. I’m kind of embarrassed on the Hub’s behalf, but I guess it’s all new and exciting to him anyway. We manage to get through the turnstiles and onto the platform without any more trouble. There’s a capsule waiting there, almost full. I barrel headfirst into it, hauling him after me, and the doors slide shut on us while he’s still trying to back out again.

“Oh dear,” he mutters, flattening himself against the doors. “I do beg your pardon, madam. And I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid I don’t have room to—”

“Cut it out, Fraser!” I snap. “No one has room, okay?”

He frowns and falls silent, shrinking as far away from the woman next to him as he can, which means he’s pressed right up against me instead, which is…hey, it’s not my fault, ’cause I can’t move either, but the air circ is on the fritz again and _damn_ it’s getting hot in here.

The doors slide open at the interchange and we tumble out onto the platform, breathing hard. Shaking my head to clear it, I start elbowing my way through the crowds towards the Cyan line, and I’m halfway down the tunnel before I realize I’ve lost Fraser again. He’s still on the Blue platform, gazing at the map on the wall like a goddamn tourist. At the sound of my footsteps he turns, smiling.

“I believe I’m starting to get my bearings,” he says, raising a finger to trace the pattern of lines. “If we—”

I grab his arm and march him down the tunnel, ignoring his protests.

“You do _not_ look at the maps!” I tell him, once we’re safely on the Cyan platform. “Maps are only there for muggers to pick out the tourists. Keep your eyes on me. Got it?”

“Eyes on you,” he agrees dutifully, and for a while he’s quiet, watching people stream out of the tunnel and mass around us on the platform. Then he perks up. “It’s an interesting theory, though, the use of public signage to identify the most vulnerable individuals. Somewhat analogous to culling the herd, I suppose.”

“Culling the…yeah, whatever.” I hear the whoosh of an approaching capsule and nudge Fraser toward the platform edge. “Just keep your eyes on me.”

 

* * *

 

Down on the 47th deck, I open my cabin, wave Fraser in, and shut the hatch behind me.

“Grab a pew,” I say, and he looks around as if I might actually have tables and chairs hidden away somewhere, which, no, the place isn’t _that_ big. I got a bed, though, a real one, and after another moment’s hesitation he sits down on the end of it, watching me warily. I busy myself chucking my breakfast stuff into the recyc and shoving my dirty clothes under the bed. When I look up again, he’s still eyeing me.

“What?” I snap.

He blinks. “You, uh…you don’t even _look_ like Ray.”

“Oh, way to be sensitive about it! It’s exoprosthetic reconstruction, remember? Welsh said he gave you the lowdown. Some perp threw acid, I had to get a bioskin refit, so I upgraded while I was at it, ’cause hey, who wouldn’t?”

“Hmm,” he says. “And your hair?”

I run a self-conscious hand over my spikes. “What, you don’t like it? It’s the new, sexier me.”

“But why would they have altered the underlying structures? A spray of acid wouldn’t have cut that deep. And then there are all your other defects”—he notices my expression and tries to backpedal—“well, no, not defects, just…quirks. Common enough for a bio, but nothing that Ray would have.”

“Quirks?” I say, my voice rising defensively. “Like what?”

“Well, you’re not straight, for one thing.”

“Huh?”

He holds up his hands with the palms a few centimeters apart and tilts them a little. “Your alignment: you’re not standing quite straight. I’d estimate your right leg to be nearly a centimeter shorter than your left, possibly from repeated impacts over a long period of time.”

“No kidding? I gotta stop kicking people in the head.”

“In addition to that,” he continues solemnly, ignoring the interruption, “your right shoulder is slightly lower than your left, as one would expect to find in the dominant arm.”

I swivel both shoulders. They feel fine to me. “So, wait, you’re saying that’s normal?”

“Normal for a right-handed organic specimen with thirty-something years of wear and tear, yes, but there’s no reason why a mech would demonstrate any such asymmetry.”

“Maybe I’m low-end. Maybe I’m an end-of-line rush job.” I say it kind of half-heartedly, though, because I’m not fooling him and we both know it.

He stares at me for a while longer and then to my surprise he dissolves into laughter, a crazy giggle that sits so weirdly with his uptight persona that I can’t help grinning back. I flop down next to him on the bed, leaning on my elbows while I wait for him to sober up. It takes a while.

“No, I don’t think you’re low-end, whoever you are,” he says, once he’s gotten his breath back at last. “I think you’re a fine officer and a worthy, if human, stand-in for my friend. That granted, perhaps you could finally do me the courtesy of telling me where he is.”

“Yeah, um, about that…”

I study the tangle of ducts across my ceiling while I try to figure out how much Fraser needs to know. The less the better, for his own sake; I don’t want to get him wiped by the mob. Then again, it’s obvious he’s not gonna let this drop. If I don’t tell him, I’ve got a Mountie shadow for life. As I lie there weighing up sucky options A and B, the soles of my boots clunk against each other, and I wiggle my legs back and forth until I’ve gotten them lined up just right. Asymmetrical, my ass.

“Okay.” I sit up and take a deep breath. “Okay. You ever heard of the Vegas?”

Fraser props himself sideways against the bulkhead so he can study my face. It feels like an interrogation, as if I’m the perp here. “The spacehub Vegas?” he asks.

“What, like there’s another? Yeah, the spacehub Vegas. Couple of light-years off. That’s where Vecchio is, and that’s where you gotta leave him, unless you wanna get him whacked.” I lower my voice. “He’s deep undercover in the cartel, so for the time being you gotta make believe I’m him. Sorry, buddy, but the rest is classified. Storytime’s over.”

Fraser frowns. “But if that’s true, why did he send me a cryptic message asking for my assistance?”

“He did?”

“Yes, on a voice-call via wormhole routing. I knew straightaway that something was wrong, so I booked a passage on the first shuttle out.”

“Why, what did he say?”

“He said he couldn’t be at the spaceport to pick me up.”

I stare at Fraser. “That’s all? You wigged out over that?”

“Well, I hadn’t been planning a trip to the Chicago.”

“Huh.” I scratch at my wrist ports while I think about this. “And he knew you hadn’t?”

“He did.”

“So you think the message was like a code or something.”

Fraser nods. “Yes, and he must have had reason to believe a third party might be listening in.”

“Okay, so if he didn’t mean it literally, what _did_ he mean?”

“There you have me.” Fraser spreads his hands. “All I know is that he’s in some sort of trouble and he called me for help, so here I am.”

I consider this. It’s a two-month trip from Canada via the shortest wormhole, so if Vecchio really was in trouble when he made that call, it was two months ago, back when I started this gig. But Fraser has no real reason to trust me here. If he’s right that something’s hinky, he’s taking a huge gamble in telling a complete stranger. Huge enough that maybe I should trust him back.

“Yeah, well, maybe he did want your help at the time,” I say. “Thing is, everything went down way too fast for that. He happened to be the spit of some cartel guy the Feds took out—I dunno, maybe some tech on a production line used a facial mold once too often—whatever, Vecchio had the look, so they did a switcheroo, but they had to do it fast. Couldn’t wait the time it’d take you to hike in from Nowheresville.”

Fraser’s shaking his head. “Ray would have been briefed about all of that, surely.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I heard it was done same day. They pulled me in with like an hour’s notice, put me on the spot, made me choose.” I poke the wrinkles in the bedcover; I don’t want to see Fraser’s face as I tell him this. “Look, they offered me a chance to start over, ditch the past. I said, ‘Well, I’ll think about it.’ They said, ‘Think about it right now or you’re out.’”

“Out?”

“ _Out_ out.” I grimace as I dig a fingernail too hard into the skin around my wrist. “Things weren’t great, okay? I’d been off my game, dropped the ball once too often, the divorce and that. Plus it’s hard being a bio in the CPD. Sam covered for me all he could, but…”

Ugh, excuses. I stop myself before I can sound any more pathetic. Fraser reaches out and stills my hand.

“Don’t scratch the ports, it’ll only make them itch more. Frankly I’m surprised your superiors thought such surgery was ethical.”

I pull my arm away, tipping my wrists to the light. The skin around the implants is still slightly inflamed but at least you can’t tell where the needle tracks used to be.

“They fooled everyone else,” I say. “And they’re only wireless ports, not neural hardwired. I may be damaged, Fraser, but I’m not stupid.”

“I’m sure you’re not. Nevertheless, I’m not convinced there wasn’t any foul play here. If Ray really is undercover, why did his handlers choose the galaxy’s least convincing doppelganger as a stand-in, and an expendable one at that? You may look like a mech at a casual glance but you’ll be caught out sooner or later. They must have been aware of that.”

I scowl at him. “What, I spill my guts to you and you don’t even believe me?”

“I don’t doubt you’re telling the story as it was told to you. I just don’t think they told you the truth.”

I tuck my hands under my thighs to keep from scratching them. “Look, as far as I know, Vecchio’s on the Vegas. You want me to believe otherwise, you gotta show me a damn good reason. Chances are he’s fine, or as fine as anyone can be in the cartel, so if we’re gonna go poking around we need to move real careful or we’ll blow his cover. And believe me, I don’t wanna jump down that particular wormhole.”

Fraser hunches forward and straightens up again. His coat’s so square I’m amazed he can move at all. “I appreciate the difficulties,” he says. “I’m simply asking for some proof of my friend’s safety.”

“So come down to the station tomorrow. We can look into it, as long as we keep it under the radar.” I clap him on the shoulder and get to my feet. “Believe it or not, I’m one of the good guys, even if you do think I’m expendable.”

“Very well.” He stands up but then hesitates. “Will the police station be in any fit state by then, though?”

“Huh? Oh, the bomb? Yeah, yeah, the place gets trashed all the time. Hub Upkeep can refit the partitions, install new screens. The data’s centralized, so all the old tech can go to recyc. They just gotta clear up the de—, de—”

“Detritus?” he suggests.

“Debris. You got somewhere to stay tonight?”

“Constable Turnbull has been kind enough to secure me a room in the Outer Colonies consulate, yes.”

“Outer Colonies, that’s on Deck Eight, right? Here, take this.” I fish in my closet drawer and toss Fraser one of the key fobs the CPD usually keeps for schoolkids. Its holomap uncurls around his head, shimmering in brightly colored swirls. I point to the dot marking the Outer Colonies consulate. “See, all you gotta do is take the Cyan line outbound, then eight stops on the Cerise, round here. But no peeking at this on the Tube, okay? Keep it turned off till you get home. I don’t wanna hear from the Transit guys that they spent their night scraping dead rube off the platforms again.”

Fraser traces the lines, twisting them round his fingers while he memorizes the route. Then he clicks the fob shut and stands up.

“Thank you kindly, uh…”

“Ray,” I say. “Call me Ray. See you tomorrow, Fraser.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Fraser turns up at the station next day, I’ve amassed a bunch of stuff I’m itching to show him. Carl Wollaston was the medical examiner on duty last night and he’s some kind of vampire-type freak, hyper-efficient on the graveyard shift, so the autopsy on our bomber is already online. He’s taken her biometrics and pulled her profile, too: Jael Carraway, aged twenty-two, unemployed Chicago native. Long rap sheet, mostly misdemeanors, plus a sealed juvie record I doubt is worth unsealing. I can’t remember ever picking her up myself but it looks like she was one of our frequent fliers, in and out of lockup as if it had revolving doors. The Domiciliary List has her registered to a thirty-berth dorm down near the engines, the sort of shithole where an engineer can earn twice their monthly paycheck by certifying the radiation levels as safe. Poor kid. That would explain the thinning hair and skin blotches on her autopsy report.

On the plus side, using her name as a search string I’ve managed to crack the code on Vecchio’s comm, and guess what? Jael wasn’t just any deadbeat punk, she was one of Vecchio’s pet CIs. He kept a record of every payment he made her, the most recent of which was ten weeks ago, fifty bucks. It doesn’t say what for, unfortunately, and there’s no clue why she tried to steal his comm. Too late to ask her, and anyway she’s Bomb Squad’s problem now. But the same code unlocks the rest of the comm’s data, including Vecchio’s schedule. The day before he left, the day before I started this gig, he had a meeting set up with another woman, someone whose name I do recognize.

“Amari Almeda!” I tell Fraser, who looks blank. “Used to play left wing for the Rockets when we were kids? Nah, you probably wouldn’t remember.”

“Cornerball, right?” he says.

“Yeah, my dorm-mom was a big fan, took me to all the games. Almeda was my hero. When I was eight or nine I had a shirt with her number on it, and I made my dorm-mom wash it every night for a year so I could wear it next day. I was gonna be a left wing the minute I grew up. Well, either that or a pirate.”

“A pirate?”

“What? Everyone wants to be a pirate!”

Fraser looks puzzled. “To the best of my recollection, I wanted to be a Mountie.”

“Huh. Guess you’re living the dream, then. Me, I’m still working on it.” I tuck Vecchio’s comm back into my jacket for safekeeping. “Anyway, Almeda must’ve retired fifteen years back or more. I looked her up, she’s a fitness coach for the under-18 squad now. C’mon, let’s go see what Vecchio wanted with her.”

The Tube’s not that crowded at this time of day. Cutting past the off-peak dodderers, I thump down into one of the capsule’s two free seats. Fraser waves an elderly lady into the other and radiates silent disapproval at me until I sigh and get up and offer her partner mine. I lean against the partition instead, my feet braced wide.

“Happy now?” I mutter.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine. It can’t be far,” Fraser says, looking around for a handhold. The capsule lurches into motion before he’s found one, and I feel a stab of guilty pleasure as he staggers sideways. I grab him before he can hit the central pole, though, and keep hold until he’s gotten his balance again.

“Thank you kindly,” he says, bracing himself next to me on the partition. “Nice catch, by the way. Perhaps you should have been a left wing after all.”

“Nah,” I say, curling my hands into hooks. “Pirate, see?”

He touches his hat in salute. “Aye aye, shipmate,” he says, straight-faced, and I have to look away to keep from grinning like an idiot. I’m starting to get why he and Vecchio were such good buddies. It’s been a while since I had a partner who laughed _with_ me instead of _at_ me. There was Sam Franklin, yeah, but he was always a rung or two above me, and now he’s Management, so I can’t talk to him like one of the guys. Maybe with Fraser I can.

When we get to Deck 31, we head over to the private gym where the Rockets train their youth team. The front hatch is unlocked, the court empty. The kids must still be in school. They’ve left the place as messy as a recyc pod, though, and we have to pick our way round a jumble of corner poles and crash mats to reach the archway at the far end.

“Ms. Almeda?” I call. “Chicago PD! Okay if we talk to you?”

No answer. Fraser lifts the corner pole blocking the gangway and stands it upright, hooking it carefully in place with safety cords that don’t look like they’ve ever been used. Ducking under the archway, we find ourselves in a gym with most of its deck marked out in treadmill warning stripes. The clutter’s even worse in here: crates of gear, half a dozen more poles, and two or three mats stored upright, shutting off the rest of the room. Trying to edge past them, I catch my foot on a treadmill control.

“Gah! Damn it!”

I kick it aside and accidentally set its treadmill going, which topples the corner pole that was balanced on it. I make a grab for the pole, but before I can stop it, it collides with the rest of them, sending them all crashing down on me.

“Ow, _ow!_ God _dammit!”_

Nothing I can do but duck and cover until the last one’s fallen. When they’re done trying to kill me, I push up, trying to stand again, but my left leg doesn’t seem to be working. It’s numb, kind of tingly, with the familiar sting of a stun-gun charge. Shit, I must have left the safety off. I ought to know better than that. Huh, I _do_ know better—the safety’s still on. Weird.

Fraser’s trying to haul the poles off me, but they’re weighted at the base, too heavy for one guy to lift. Shoving my weapon back in its holster, I start to help. Rookie error: while we’re distracted, the crash mat behind us shifts and a black-clad figure dashes past, gun in hand.

“Hey!” I yell. “Get her, Fraser!”

I draw my weapon again and fire wildly. Abandoning the poles, Fraser sprints after her, pulling something from his belt pouch and flinging it at her. She’s faster, though. She dodges through the archway, into the cornerball court. A second later I hear the front hatch clang as she escapes into the main gangway.

Fraser’s back within the minute, shaking his head as he helps me to my feet. “Sorry, Ray, I didn’t manage to catch her, and I can’t get the hatch open either. She appears to have secured it from the outside.”

“She locked us in? Shit.”

“I suppose we could force the lock and reimburse the owners later for the damage?”

“Nah, forget it. We’ll never catch her out there, not with all the crowds. What the hell was her problem, anyway?” I tap my comm. “Control, this is badge number 017429 requesting an urgent APB on Deck 31, Sector 8, Gangway, uh”—I call up the ship schematics and check the layout—“Gangway D-Delta. Foot mobile heading aft, adult female, one-sixty centimeters—”

“One six five,” Fraser corrects.

“One six five centimeters, black shirt and pants, armed and dangerous. Suspect believed to be Amari Almeda. Also, request override of main hatch for Rockets gym, location 31-8 Delta-022. Over.” I wait for the acknowledgement and shut the comm off. “Done, for what it’s worth. There’s a million holes she can duck into before backup arrives.” I rub my ankle, wincing. The numbness is wearing off already, so it must have been a glancing shot. Apparently Almeda’s gotten hold of an illegal stun-gun and she’s not a big fan of the CPD.

Fraser finishes setting the poles upright and goes over to the archway to retrieve his missile: a small pocketknife with a scrap of black cloth impaled on the point. He’s got impressive aim—useless in this case, but impressive all the same. Half a dozen faint burn-marks on the bulkheads are the only sign of my own return fire. I poke at them, shaking my head.

“You gotta stop showing me up, Fraser. I’m the one that’s supposed to be mech.”

“Indeed,” he says drily, “and a detective _first grade_.”

“Hey, I’m a good shot! I just need my glasses.”

“So where are they?”

“Mechs don’t wear ’em.”

“Ah,” he says, shutting the treadmill off and checking behind the crash mat. “You know, I don’t mean to be critical, but you might want to consider laser eye surgery, if only for your own safety.”

“Sure, and I’ll take a month’s vacation on Cloud Nine too, as soon as the lotto check comes through.”

“Excellent notion. I think I’ll join you.” He pulls the mat further aside and inhales sharply. “You might want to come and see this first, though.”

Even before I step round the mat, I know what’s going to be there. Something in Fraser’s voice tells me that much. What I don’t expect is _who_. I haven’t seen Amari Almeda in the flesh since I was a teenager, and she’s filled out a lot in the twenty years since then, gained a few lines, lost the glossy blackness of her hair. There’s no mistaking those high cheekbones, though, or that strong chin, that aquiline nose. No mistaking the smashed-in skull, either, or the ooze of gray jello that means there’s no point calling the medics. I turn away, gagging and swallowing hard.

Fraser squats down next to me, careful not to disturb the blood spatter, and puts a consoling hand on my shoulder. “Try not to be sick on the crime scene if you can help it, Ray.”

“Yeah, never heard that one before,” I mutter, once I can get the words out. “This is Almeda, Fraser. It’s definitely her.”

“Ah. So who was the woman I chased?”

“No idea. Whoever wanted her dead, I guess. Seriously dead. Deader than dead.”

No one lasts long in Major Crimes if they can’t deal with gore. I take a deep breath and steel myself. A quick glance at Almeda is enough to show she’s been beaten about the chest as well as the skull, and I don’t have to look far for the murder weapon; a bloodied section of corner pole lying nearby has to be Exhibit A. There’s a burn mark on her arm, too, suggesting she was incapacitated with a stun-gun first. I lean back and squint at her body. Something’s weird about the way she’s lying, with her head almost severed from her torso. That doesn’t match an assault with a blunt object.

Fraser bends over her. “Hmm, that’s strange. There appear to be wires protruding from—”

“Eww, god, don’t—”

“—her esophagus and trachea, almost as if she’s had implants fitted. And the broken skin looks more like exoprosthesis than…” He pauses and looks up, sniffing the air. “Ray, do you by any chance smell…oh dear.”

I lift my head, and he’s right, there’s a strong whiff of smoke from somewhere. For a second I freeze, waiting for the bomb blast that never comes. Then I’m on my feet, yanking the mats aside. There’s no IED this time, just the stink of smoke mixed with some sort of accelerant, and it smells like it’s coming from the cornerball court. I sprint over to the archway, and _whoom!_ A wall of fire leaps up to greet me. It’s filled the court already and the flames are starting to lick into the gym.

“God!” I stumble back, covering my face with one arm and reaching for my comm with the other. “Control, this is badge 017429 requesting fire evac and backup at 31-8 Delta-022 ASAP. Control? Control, you getting this? Damn it, where are they?”

“Stay low, Ray,” Fraser says. “The air’s clearer near the deck.”

It is, but only marginally. Smoke is surging into the gym, filling it fast. The perp must have sparked the fire off with her stun-gun as she ran, and it’s fully caught now, too big to fight. I hammer at the touchscreen by the archway but it’s blank and unresponsive. Whatever’s blocking my comm must be blocking the smoke sensors too.

I crouch as low as I can and call up the ship schematics again, trawling through the holos. No exits except the locked hatch, but there’s a ducting channel running right past the starboard bulkhead. It’s marked as air recirc only, but I spent half my childhood playing in those vents, so I know some of them are wide enough to crawl into. If we can break through the bulkhead, we can make it out of here before we get fried.

Grabbing the bloodied pole, I haul the crash mat aside and take a swing at the starboard cladding. The first impact puts a dent in the panel. The second one knocks it loose. On the third swing I start to stagger, my lungs burning from the smoke. I try to stand but can’t; all I can do is crouch and cough, my eyes streaming.

Then Fraser’s there, hauling me upright. He seizes my head with both hands so I can’t pull away, and presses his mouth to mine. For a minute I’m too dizzy to understand what he’s trying to do, and it doesn’t matter in any case because there’s no air left in this goddamn tomb and we’re both going to die before I can punch my way out. The world’s turning black, I’m choking on my last, stinking, acrid breath, and I’m going to die in here, kicking and fighting as if I’ve been spaced.

Then he shakes me and shoves my mouth open, and he breathes for me, forcing hot, damp air deep into my lungs. Even at second hand, the oxygen works miracles. My vision swims back into focus as the deck steadies itself under my feet. Straightening, I grip the broken pole as hard as I can and smash the panel with one final swing, breaking through into the crawl space. Fraser dives headfirst into the gap and hauls me after him, dragging me half a dozen meters down the conduit before he lets go.

For the first minute or two, all I can do is crouch there, gasping. It feels like I’ll never have enough air again. Smoke is streaming through the breach in the ducting channel, but the conduit fans are sending it spiraling aft, away from Fraser and me as we huddle and cough.

“God, that was close,” I croak at last, wiping my eyes. “Way too close. Hey, what are you…?”

Fraser’s pushing past me, back to the hole in the bulkhead, where he starts hammering at something. The cladding isn’t bioluminescent in here, and he’s blocking what little light is leaking from the gym. Then there’s a loud clunk and the world goes black for real.

“What the…?” I pat down my pockets and find my comm, which I’ve somehow managed not to drop. Fraser’s smoke-stained face looks eerily calm in the comm’s muted glow as he turns back to me.

“I’ve blocked the gap behind us,” he says. “That should cut off the supply of oxygen to the chamber again and contain the fire until help arrives.”

“Oh. Okay. Good.” I scrub my face on my t-shirt, which comes away streaked in soot. “And that other thing, what was that?”

“The other thing?”

“The thing you were doing with your mouth.”

“Oh, that. That’s buddy breathing. You, uh, seemed to be struggling, and I have excess lung capacity, so…”

“Buddy breathing?”

“Standard procedure, Ray.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

There’s still no answer when I try Control again. It’s starting to get hot in here, the metal-skinned conduit warm to the touch. I begin shuffling toward the flow of fresh air but have to halt after a few meters when the ducting bends through ninety degrees. I could maybe squeeze past, but Fraser’s shoulders are scraping the sides as it is. He crawls after me as far as he can and squats beside me, a dark mass filling the space.

Several more minutes go by with no sign of rescue arriving. Above the background crackle and howl of the fire, I’m hyperaware of Fraser’s breathing, his closeness. After a while he coughs and shifts sideways until his back’s set against the metal, his knees pressed tight to his chest, his eyes sliding shut. He undoes his collar, then the rest of his coat, button by button. I’m streaming with sweat in just my t-shirt, so he has to be baking in that stupid costume. For the first time it occurs to me that being cooped up here is probably tougher on him than me. He’s from an unlidded planet, one of those primitive rocks where the living quarters are a few decks high at most and everything else is uncontained, open to space. The whole Hub probably feels like a tin can to him.

He opens his eyes, catching me watching him.

“You know, I do try to stay abreast of the latest developments in law enforcement,” he remarks, apropos of nothing, “but galactic bulletins don’t always reach us in a timely fashion in the Northwest Colonies.” He pauses, waiting for a response.

“Uh, no, I guess not?”

He nods as if satisfied. “So that’s probably why I was unaware the Android Regulation Act had been rescinded. Not that it really affects Canada, of course, but that’s no excuse for ignorance where galaxy-wide legislation is concerned.”

“It’s been—whuh? No, it hasn’t! It hasn’t been anythinged! You can’t go messing with the ARA, even in the ass-end of nowhere.”

“But in that case…” He scratches his cheek, leaving streaks in the dirt. “Ray, you must have seen what I saw. Even the cursory examination we were able to make of Ms. Almeda’s body was enough to demonstrate that, although she was certainly bio as regards her skull, brain, and upper spinal cord, all the visible tissue below her neck was synthetic, with an underlying metallic endoskeleton.”

“Uh-huh. I think you’re tripping, Fraser. You inhaled too much smoke or something.”

He coughs again. “Well, perhaps I might have.”

“Ain’t no ‘perhaps’ there, buddy. Just keep breathing, in and out.”

“Right you are.”

He’s gotten me thinking about it, though, because there was definitely something odd about Almeda’s neck. A few wires in it, maybe. Wires, and some other bits of metal, and a strip of skin that looked like skin only in the holo-ish way that exoprosthesis does, like if you blinked too hard it might shimmer and morph into something else. But that doesn’t make any sense, because there’s no way you’d get mech tissue on a bio. That’d be weird. Weirder than weird. So weird, it’s not even _possible_.

“That’s not even _possible_ , Fraser!”

“Hmm,” he says. “In the legal sense, do you mean? Because mechotype xenotransplantation is theoretically feasible on the technical level, at least in the short term and with small amounts of tissue, before immunological rejection kicks in. If rumor holds true, research teams are already attempting to graft exoprosthesis onto non-human hosts in several of the less stringently regulated colonies.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean anyone would do it to a human! That’s fucked up. Why would any doctor risk that?”

“Think about it. What’s the most valuable commodity a trader could offer? What does everyone want?”

“Sex,” I say instantly. I don’t gotta think twice about that, especially with him crouched right beside me.

He pulls at his earlobe. “Well, yes, perhaps. What else?”

“Uh, drugs? Pizza?”

“Immortality,” he says. “People want to live forever. Give them a new body and they can.”

I shake my head. “No way. No way. I mean, that’d make sense if we could make new mechs, but we can’t. And using a body—even if you could do that, it’d kill the mech, right? You couldn’t do it without killing the mech.”

“That would be my understanding, yes. The available literature on the subject is limited, obviously, but I assume the damage to the neural processors would be too extensive for the AI’s consciousness to be preserved.”

“Right, and the AI Rights guys would be all over that like flies on shit, so there’s no way anyone would get away with it even if they wanted to, which they wouldn’t, because it’s just fucking _weird_.”

“I don’t disagree with you about the unsavory aspects, Ray, but it would appear that Ms. Almeda did get away with it, at least for a while.”

I scrub at my eyes and mouth again. Okay, so there’s definitely something strange going on here, even if Fraser’s way off target with the whole body-swap craziness. Vecchio was planning to meet Almeda, and now he’s gone and she’s dead, and someone’s set a blaze in her gym that’s somehow failed to trigger the auto fire control. And maybe, _maybe_ she had some kind of shady illegal implants or something, too, although I can’t prove that, because the fire’s gonna destroy everything that’s left of her if it’s not contained soon. Which all adds up to…what?

Up until now I’ve been humoring Fraser, waiting for solid proof that his conspiracy theory is bullshit. Now I’ve got two dead bodies on my patch, both unnatural deaths, both connected to Vecchio—oh, and I’ve almost been killed twice in two days. So, yeah, maybe I’m starting to rethink the whole bullshit thing.

“If Ray knew about Ms. Almeda’s unconventional bodily modifications, that might have put him in considerable danger,” Fraser points out. “It might have been in various people’s interests to make him disappear.”

“What, by somehow getting him assigned to an inter-Hub undercover gig? Because it was Welsh who called me in on this, Welsh and Sam Franklin. You seriously telling me they made all that stuff up?”

Fraser pokes at the side of the conduit with his boot tip. “I don’t know, Ray. I’m not closely acquainted with either gentleman.”

“Damn right you’re not. Next you’re gonna try telling me they broke Vecchio up, used him for parts.” I catch Fraser’s expression. “Ah, shit, I didn’t mean that. Look, Sam’s a straight-up guy. If he says Vecchio’s on the Vegas, he’s on the Vegas. Who knows, maybe the CPD sent him there to keep him safe. Either way, no one would have trashed him. A mech’s worth way more intact, taken offgrid and wiped.”

“That wouldn’t be much comfort to him, assuming he wasn’t backed up.”

“Nah, he’ll be okay,” I say, hoping I’m right. “We run down Almeda’s killer, we can find out what was going on with her, and maybe that’ll tell us where he is.”

Fraser reaches into his tunic pocket and pulls out the scrap of cloth from the perp’s t-shirt. “This might have been of some use with that, but unfortunately I don’t have sufficient olfactory acuity to follow the scent trail, especially with this level of smoke contamination. It’s a pity Diefenbaker isn’t here.”

“Who?”

“Diefenbaker, my wolf. He’s probably still sulking that I left him at home. I did try to explain the draconian nature of the Chicago’s quarantine code to him, but, well, I won’t repeat his response. As you know, wolves have very limited patience for regulatory minutiae.” He shrugs apologetically, and I have no clue whether he’s being serious. Either he’s yanking my chain or he’s actually batshit crazy. Or maybe wolves on Canada really do talk? How the hell should I know? If Fraser’s anything to go by, talking animals would fit right in on Planet Cuckoo.

There’s a sudden clunk behind the bulkhead, followed by the sharp hiss of the air-evac vents. Fraser and I glance at each other and then we both start hammering on the conduit panels and yelling for all we’re worth. I don’t know why the cavalry’s taken this long to arrive, but I don’t care as long as they get us out of here.

 

* * *

 

First thing I do afterwards is go home, scrub myself all over, and toss everything I’ve been wearing into the recyc.

Second thing I do is go back to the Two-Seven, stomp my feet, and demand to know why Control weren’t answering and why Fire Response took so long to turn up.

Third thing I do is get yelled at by Welsh in return, way louder and way longer, the gist of which is, “Control had a temporary tech failure, so what? You’re alive, aren’t you? So quit yammering before I _make_ you quit. And by the way, if you don’t submit your worklog by the end of today, you can kiss your paycheck goodbye. Got it?”

I scowl at him and file a D15 incident report anyway. Fire Response isn’t a nice-to-have and that place could’ve been full of kids. Sometimes I kick up a stink because I’m stubborn, sometimes just because I’m _right._

Fraser’s taken himself off to Jael Carraway’s funeral—I told him not to, but he’s convinced he failed her somehow—so I get to go check out Amari Almeda’s dorm by myself. It doesn’t help much. Her dorm-mates have been using her bunk as spare closet space, and when I ask them about her, they shrug and say she hasn’t been there for ages. No, they don’t know where she was staying. “She kept herself to herself”, all the usual stuff.

Back in the day, I used to know a fixer for the Rockets, a go-to guy called Clint, but it takes me the rest of the afternoon to track him down. He’s moved dorms, changed comms, and the only CI that I can get hold of is a Meteors fan who spits and hangs up when I mention the competition. Finally I call my dorm-mom, who calls one of her friends who knows a guy who knows a guy who puts me through to Clint, who reckons Almeda was staying with a girlfriend and promises to get back to me tomorrow with an address.

I’ve been checking the APB for our runaway firebug all day, without luck. Average height, dressed in black, looked female: only a couple hundred thousand people around here would fit that description. The gym is burned to a crisp, so we’re not going to get any trace, and when I ask the on-call ME about Almeda’s autopsy he snorts and advises me not to hold my breath.

Back in the bullpen, I check on the APB one last time before pulling up my neglected worklog.

“Ahem. Ray?”

I look up from my screen to see Fraser approaching. He’s scrubbed clean and wearing a fresh uniform, and he’s holding a buzzcard gingerly by its corners as though it might bite him any second.

“Hey, Red. Whatcha got there?”

He tugs nervously at his collar. “Er, it’s the key to the Ambassadorial viewing chamber. Constable Turnbull is detailed to serve drinks at an embassy function later this evening and loaned me the key meanwhile. I was wondering whether you might perhaps like to see the place.”

I shrug. Sounds like the dullest thing in the world, but Fraser’s way more decorative than anything the Two-Seven has to offer, and besides, I broke through the overtime pay-limit several hours ago.

“Sure, Fraser, whatever floats your boat. I’ll finish up here and meet you by the portal, okay?”

He nods, flashing me that quick half-smile of his, and heads for the exit, while I return to backdating the missing entries in my worklog.

The viewing chamber, when we get there an hour later and buzz open its hatchway, is something else. The ceiling’s so high we don’t even have to duck under the beams, and the whole place is decked out in the sort of eye-popping opulence that went out of fashion in the 2150s, all bulkhead-to-bulkhead carpets and plush red velvet. Even the viewing screen is tucked away behind velvet drapes. I can’t help glancing over my shoulder in case I’ve tracked dirt in on my boots or something, but Fraser doesn’t seem fazed by the décor overkill. He pulls the gold-threaded cord to open the drapes and waves me to the front row of seats. Ignoring the shelf laden with bottles and glasses, he goes over to the Cube and returns with two steaming cups of coffee.

“Thanks.” I pull down the neighboring seat for him and take a sip of my drink, almost spitting it out when I realize it isn’t coffee at all. It’s hot and brown and bittersweet, but it’s nothing like any coffee I’ve ever tried, even the stuff from the station canteen.

“It’s cocoa, Yukon style,” Fraser says. “I hope you like it. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else, but they must have recalibrated the Cube in here to suit the Chicago’s foreign guests.”

I take another swig, feeling it burn a line down to my stomach. There’s no real buzz to it, but it’s comforting all the same. It tastes of Fraser somehow, or of how I imagine he’d taste, sweet and strange and slightly alien, and it’s warming me inside in a way that isn’t just from the heat. Cradling my cup, I kick back in my seat and nod up at the hi-res film playing on the screen, which covers most of the bulkhead.

“Look at that, Fraser, it’s kind of neat. It’s like watching the night sky.”

“Well, it _is_ the night sky,” he says, wrapping his hands around his own cup. “Beta-Nine-Nemai set approximately two hours ago behind the gas giants, and what you can see here are the rimward constellations. I would try to name them, but I confess I’m still unacquainted with the majority, beautiful though they are.”

I study the sprinkling of stars on the screen, trying to spot patterns. In the dimness of the room they’re glowing almost like the real thing, though they’re outshone by Fraser’s own face, lit up with enthusiasm as he watches them. He kind of reminds me of Beta-Nine-Nemai itself: he’s got a smile so bright you could run half the Hub off it, but stare at him too long and you might go blind. (Which, incidentally, is something no one bothered to warn me about before I signed up to this gig. “He’s Canadian,” they told me. “And he’s nuts.” No mention of the most obvious thing of all, the thing no one could have missed: “Oh, and by the way, he’s _real fucking pretty_ , Kowalski, so try not to make a fool of yourself, okay?”)

“Are they different than on Canada, then?” I ask, keeping my voice low, though I couldn’t say why. “The star patterns, I mean?”

“Yes…well, no, some of them are the same stars, but the angle of view is different, so the constellations appear different too. Although—look there.” He leans toward me and points at the screen’s upper right corner. “Doesn’t that look rather like a spacerat to you?”

“What, there?” I crane my head. “Maybe, I guess, if you make the bright dot the eye and that string of dots the tail. You got spacerats in the Outer Colonies too?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He settles back into his seat, although I can still feel his arm against mine, warm through his uniform jacket. “They’re not the same species, but they’ve evolved convergently to fill much the same ecological niche, and we call them by the same name, colloquial nomenclature being an essentially conservative phenomenon.”

“Ours got here from the Denver on a cargo ship twenty years back,” I say, propping my feet comfortably on the air-circ vent and resting my head on the seat back. “They’ve spread everywhere by now. Horrible little critters, never let go of a potential meal. If one comes up the toilet and clamps down, you better hope you got a stun-gun handy.”

Fraser’s soft laugh sounds loud in the empty auditorium. “Please don’t tell Turnbull that. He takes the Chicago PD very seriously, as representatives of his host station. He believes everything you say.”

“That’s ’cause it’s all true, Benton buddy. Every last word.”

“Duly noted.” Fraser taps his cup companionably against mine, and there’s a long pause as we watch a supply carrier heading slowly aft, its reverse thrusters blinding out the stars and leaving orange trails across the screen.

“Of course,” he says eventually, “most of the toilets on Canada are outdoor privies, so there aren’t any sewers for spacerats to run up.” His tone is wistful like you wouldn’t believe. Here’s a guy who loves his planet so much, he’d happily shit in a hole in the ground just so long as he’s home.

“You really miss the place, don’t you?”

“I do. I know it doesn’t sound like much—”

“Sounds like hell from where I’m sitting, Space Boy. Outer rock, goldilocks minus five. That’s gonna need a damn fine sales pitch.”

“Goldilocks minus six, actually,” he admits, “but it’s still well within the habitable zone.”

“Yeah, yeah. You say habitable, I say freezing my balls off.”

“I can assure you, Ray, that all my body parts are fully functional.”

I nod, matching his deadpan. “Good to know.”

He gazes at the screen in silence for a while, although I get the impression he’s not really watching it. Sure enough, when he speaks again, it’s clear his thoughts have been elsewhere.

“It’s true that the Equatorial Ocean covers most of Canada’s temperate zone,” he says, “and few of the landmasses have more than a strip of habitable coastline. Still, my own island, Yukon, is quite pleasant in the summer.”

“In the what now?”

He waves his hands and launches into some long explanation about planetary rotation and its effects on temperatures and seasons, blah blah blah. I’m not really listening; the one thing I do get is that he’s a long way from home, and he can’t—or won’t—go back until he finds Vecchio, or finds out what happened to him, at least.

“Hey, is it true Vecchio traveled all the way out there?” I say, interrupting Fraser’s lecture, which has meandered off onto weather systems or some shit.

He blinks at me. “Uh, yes, he did. I assumed you’d read the relevant files.”

“Yeah, but they sounded kinda screwy.”

“Nonetheless, he came out via the Northwest Passage. I suspected my father’s murder was connected to certain citizens of the Chicago, as you know, and investigating that link required the cooperation of the CPD. I didn’t expect a detective to visit Canada itself, but Ray did in fact do so.”

That fond tone again: it sounds like Fraser misses Vecchio almost as much as he misses home. And hey, look who he got landed with instead! No wonder the poor guy’s homesick.

“Must have been tough on him,” I say. “How did he cope?”

“Well enough, with a combination of steadfast courage and running repairs,” Fraser says. “He knew the risks. And without his innate skepticism to guide me, I might never have thought to look for the corruption we found. Sometimes it takes the best of men to believe the worst of others.”

“Corruption, huh? Bet that made you Mister Popularity, out there on the rock.”

“There was a certain amount of resentment, yes. And I was somewhat frozen out for a while—all too literally, at times. It’s a dangerous climate in which to be ostracized.”

I tug my sleeves down to my wrists. It’s making me shiver just thinking about it. “Dangerous, period,” I say. “Especially for mechs.”

“Actually, they’re designed to function at temperatures even lower than that, at least in theory. The problem is more that if something goes wrong, it can’t easily be fixed.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured things were low-tech out there.”

Fraser frowns at me; no one gets to diss his podunk little planet except him. “Well, we rely more on workarounds than electronic solutions. I suppose that’s why so many of us still use dogsleds in place of motorized transport: there’s more room for compromise. If your leading dogs fall into a crevasse, for instance, you can back up and pull them up by their traces. Plus, in an emergency you can kill some of them and use their meat to save the rest. Not that I’ve ever had to do that,” he adds quickly, noticing my horror, “but it isn’t something you could do with an engine.”

I can’t help wincing; Fraser’s sales pitch needs a shitload of work. I’ve seen dogs once or twice—yappy little beasts, pocket sized, and if you want a permit for one, you better be a millionaire at least—but I’m guessing “dog” means something else in Canadian, something a whole lot madder. Something big enough to be worth the killing, too. Fraser’s expression is so grimly determined, it makes me wonder whether he’d throw _me_ to the dogs, given a big enough emergency. Maybe to save Vecchio he would.

“Hey, we’ll find him,” I say. “I promise, okay?”

Fraser nods. He doesn’t ask the obvious question: what sort of state Vecchio will be in. Instead, in an obvious ploy to change the subject, he nudges me and points to the screen. “Look, the Northwest shuttle! See the streak of light?”

I glance up just in time to catch the last flicker as the wormhole closes around it. “Hey, I missed that. Rewind it a bit!”

He looks at me oddly. “I can’t rewind it, Ray. It’s not a recording.”

“Huh?”

He hesitates, and when he speaks again his voice is very gentle. “That isn’t a screen, it’s a porthole. As I said earlier, it _is_ the night sky.”

“It’s…?”

I look again at the screen—wait, no, the _porthole_ , which means it’s an actual window to actual space. For a long moment it doesn’t compute at all. No data, my mind’s a blank. I blink hard, trying to register the fact that what I’m seeing is the outside, the genuine outside that I’ve always known was there but never really believed in, the way you don’t really believe in things you’ll never have the access codes to see.

I stare and stare at the blackness of it. It’s beautiful and alive and goddamn _terrifying_ , and I can feel myself falling into it, falling as if I’m locked inside a Tube capsule and the brakes just failed. I grab at Fraser’s arm to save myself, and right at that moment there’s a knock at the hatchway, making us both jump.

“Ah, that must be Turnbull,” Fraser says. “I’m afraid our time is up.”

“No, wait!” I blurt. “Don’t go back to the Consulate yet, okay? Come back with me instead. For…for company. You like company, right?”

He looks at me thoughtfully. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I believe I do.” And he goes over to open the hatch.

 

* * *

 

I spend the journey to my cabin fiddling with my comm and trying not to let Fraser catch me watching him. I _think_ he’s thinking what I’m thinking, but I’ve thought that before and been way off base. One minute we’ll be having a normal conversation about normal stuff, and he’ll be nodding along the way he does, his eyes bright with freakish intelligence, and then CRASH, down we tumble into a gaping chasm of cross-purposes, because I forgot for a moment that his normal and my normal aren’t even the same species.

But this time it’s okay. This time we’re _communicating_. This time, as soon as my cabin hatch is locked behind us, he has me pinned against the bulkhead, his hands sliding up under my t-shirt, and yeah, he knows what I mean by “company”. I’m right there with him, too, tugging his Mountie costume off as quick as I can, because I like his company just fine, and I know this is gonna be good.

And it _is_ good, but it’s also kind of weird, because once he’s gotten me out of my clothes and onto the bed he doesn’t seem sure what to do next. Or, no, he’s sure, his body is more than sure, but he isn’t sure he’s _allowed_ , and I can’t tell whether the problem is him or me. Maybe it’s some Colonial thing, maybe he’s sticking to some code I’ve never learned, waiting for some signal I’m not giving? It seems to me I’m giving out all the right signals, giving them out like crazy, but he’s still nervous and hesitant about every damn thing.

Okay, so the kissing’s fantastic, tongue and everything, no hesitation there. It figures he doesn’t have a problem with that. But kissing isn’t gonna cut it here. I’ve never been a patient guy, and Fraser keeps stopping to ask, “Should I...could I...would you...” until he’s driving me nuts. I’m not usually into the running commentary—sex has never been about words, not for me—but okay, cue the cultural sensitivity here, so I keep reassuring him, even about the basic stuff. I keep telling him, “Yeah, yeah, there, like that, it’s good, don’t stop, don’t stop!” and it _is_ good, it _is_. We fit together just right, and when at last he’s sure I’m on the same page, he goes for it and it’s _great_.

Afterwards, though, more of the weird. He lies tangled up with me until the sweat’s starting to cool on our skin, until I have to pull the bedcover over us to keep from shivering, and all he does is shift closer to me, cupping my hands against the warmth of his chest and making no move to leave. I figure he’s beat (and hey, no kidding), so I let him lie a while longer, then another while. At midnight he’s still there, fast asleep now, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe this kind of—I don’t even know what this is, _cuddling?_ —maybe this is normal, for Canada? Maybe out there in the emptiness, if you manage to connect with another human being, you gotta make it last. For me, it’s almost like being a kid again. I haven’t shared my space like this since I was in kindergarten, curled up with my dormies.

Fraser doesn’t seem to find it weird. In the morning he’s still wrapped around me, clinging as if he’s on a spacewalk and I’m the only lifeline tethering him to the ship, keeping him from spinning off into the void. Maybe it should freak me out, but I sort of like it, in a strange way. It’s been a long time since anyone wanted me for more than a quick fuck. I’m squashed up against the bulkhead, my forehead and knees cold on the metal, but Fraser is supernova-warm the length of my back and I’m too comfortable to move.

It’s the 07:35 that wakes him in the end. The tunnel runs right behind the bed, and he startles awake as though another bomb’s gone off.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay!” I say. “It’s just the Cyan line, half-hour express. I’m guessing they put in better soundproofing for you bigshots up at the Consulate.”

He relaxes back on my pillow and smiles at me, a goofy smile with no trace of embarrassment that he’s spent the whole night in my bed. “Perhaps they did,” he says, running a lazy hand up my belly and settling it comfortably over my ribs. “Unfortunately, Canada and the other Northwest planets aren’t among the more economically important colonies. The room assigned to me is really more of a storage closet.”

“Cramped, huh? I get that. It was dorms all the way for me till I got this undercover gig. One bunk, two hundred by sixty centimeters, with a curtain for privacy.” I stretch out, touching my toes to the bulkhead. “God, I love having my own cabin.”

Fraser yawns and glances round at all my stuff: bed, hygiene pod, Cube, closet. “It’s a fine place. Very, uh, spacious.”

“Yeah, it’s cool. It probably doesn’t seem that huge to you, though. I mean, you probably got room to waste out there in the Northwest Areas.”

“There’s plenty of space, yes,” he says, “but not much in the way of shelter. The primary building material on Yukon is stone, which is…well, I don’t suppose you’re familiar with stone, but it’s rather like trying to build walls from chunks of endoskeleton. It’s hard work, and even harder to heat the resulting houses, so we don’t tend to make them larger than we have to.”

“Not that different than here, then. We got plenty of space out there. It’s just,” I gesture at the world beyond the hull, “cold and sorta vacuumy.”

Fraser’s eyes crinkle in amusement, and god he’s cute when he does that. He clears his throat. “I really should go,” he says, sitting up and smoothing his rumpled hair. “This has been lovely, though.”

“Yeah.” I pull the sheet back over me, watching him as he picks up his clothes and puts them back on, piece by piece: baggy uniform pants followed by bright scarlet jacket and tall boots that take him an age to lace up. He couldn’t be more conspicuous in all that get-up if he tried. When he’s done, he stands there hesitating, almost as if he’s expecting me to jump up and go with him. I wave him toward the hatchway.

“Gimme an hour and I’ll be at the station, okay? Just open the hatch a crack and make sure no one’s around, then scram.”

He hesitates again and makes like he’s going to say something, but then he nods and slips quietly out without looking back.

 

* * *

 

I’m ass-deep in paperwork by the time Fraser turns up at the Two-Seven, shiny clean and smelling of old-fashioned soap. He’s such a welcome sight in that rat-hole of a station that I smile up at him before I can stop myself, and all his uncertainty vanishes in full-wattage delight.

“Hello, Ray,” he says, coming to an expectant halt in front of me, still beaming. Goddammit, I knew last night was too good to be true. I don’t care how hot the guy is if he’s going to cost me my job.

“You’re late,” I say brusquely, flipping my chair upright and closing my screen. “We gotta get moving.” I grab my jacket and push past him, forcing him aside. Shoulders hunched, I head for the exit, hoping he’ll follow my lead.

He catches up to me as I turn into the aftward gangway, his expression more confused than hurt. He’s stealing glances at the time-stamp on every ad screen we pass: he’s on time to the very minute.

“Look, forget it, doesn’t matter,” I tell him, before he can say anything. “We got a lead, okay? We’re gonna—”

My comm buzzes, and Fraser almost crashes into me as I stop to answer it.

“Ray?” Frannie’s voice says. “You’re en route to 27-1 Alpha-9, right? We got a call to the same address, but I’ll knock it out the stack if you’ve got it covered.”

“A call? What for?”

“Homicide. Uniforms are on scene already. Play nice, Ray.” And she hangs up.

Fraser’s standing upstream of me, shielding me from the flow of commuters shoving past him on either side. It’s a gesture so chivalrous it makes me want to laugh, or maybe cry.

“Is something wrong?” he asks.

I let out a long, slow breath. “Yeah. That lead I mentioned? Something tells me she’s not gonna be the talkative type. Come on, we gotta make tracks.”

When we reach the address, two sweating uniforms are guarding its entrance.

“Detective Vecchio,” I say, flashing them my badge. “Who called it in?”

“Him,” the taller one says, pointing to a pale, shaky-looking teenager sitting on the edge of a recyc bin farther down the gangway. “Team gofer. The vic didn’t turn up for practice this morning, so he got sent round and found her like that.”

He gestures toward the cabin, and we duck under the crime scene tape. It’s huge inside, at least three meters by five, with a fixed bed wide enough for two people to lie side by side and barely touch. Beyond that there’s space for a cushioned seating area, a treadmill, and a set of weights. Sprawled by the weights is the woman I was hoping to question: Cole McKinnon, rising star of the Meteors, now minus half her skull.

“Ah, shit, I was right. We’re too late. She’s…she _was_ Amari Almeda’s girlfriend,” I tell Fraser, forcing myself to step closer to the body. I need to check this one out for myself. It’s not that I don’t trust him, but this is my jurisdiction.

“They lived together?” he asks.

“Looks like it. Almeda hadn’t been to her registered dorm for months.”

“But they kept it quiet? I don’t…” He hesitates. “Am I missing something here?”

“Different teams, Fraser.” He looks blank, so I add, “Almeda played for the Rockets. Cole McKinnon’s with the Meteors, or the Scum, as my dorm-mom would call them.”

“That actually matters?”

“Are you kidding? She’d kill me if I brought a Scum fan home.” I catch his expression. “Nah, not really. It would’ve been bad PR for McKinnon to date the opposition, though. The fans would have sulked.”

I crouch down between the weights, snapping on a pair of gloves. I can tell Fraser’s waiting to leap in the moment I turn green, but I manage to keep it together long enough to examine McKinnon’s head and torso.

“All bio,” I say, pulling the gloves off and standing up. “Nothing weird as far as I can see, apart from the whole head-bashed-in thing.”

Fraser gazes round at the rest of the cabin, which is undisturbed except for the blood spatter. “Hmm. What did the Coroner’s Office say about Ms. Almeda’s body?”

“That it was destroyed too completely to make any definite conclusions. No one’s claimed it, so they’re gonna space what’s left.”

“Destroyed?” he says, surprised. “But metallic components aren’t completely destroyed even at a thousand degrees, which is far hotter than that fire is likely to have reached.”

“Yeah, it’s bullshit. I can’t prove it, though.”

“But you saw the anomalies for yourself! I could supply a statement too, if it helped?”

I shrug. Fraser’s word and my own uncertain memories won’t outweigh a negative autopsy and Welsh’s veto.

“Is there a database of mechs you could consult to see if one’s missing?” he persists.

“What, a database just for mechs? Missing mechs are missing _people_ , Fraser.”

“Of course,” he says, flushing. “I just meant that perhaps you could check who it might have been.”

“Sure, I’ll add it to my to-do list, item three million and one.”

His lips narrow a fraction; he’s pissed, Canadian-style. I’d hate to see him really mad.

“I’m doing as much as I can to help, Ray. Were you aware, for instance, that Ms. Almeda was on the Central Hospital’s transplant waiting list?”

“She was? Wait, her autopsy report didn’t mention her medical records. How did you…”

Fraser takes out a leaflet marked _Jael Carraway, in Memoriam_. “One of the speakers at Ms. Carraway’s funeral was the Central Hospital’s organ donation coordinator, who gave a moving speech about how Ms. Carraway’s organs had been utilized to bring life and hope to several recipients. I approached him afterwards and he told me Ms. Almeda had been on the waiting list before her untimely death.”

“Why, what was wrong with her?”

“Apparently she had a rare congenital muscle wasting disorder. She was diagnosed in her early thirties and had gradually deteriorated to the point where she would have died without a heart and lung transplant within a few months. Even that wouldn’t have been a cure, merely a stop-gap, so she was repeatedly passed over in favor of patients likely to benefit for longer.”

“But she was fine! She can’t have had muscle wasting, she was working as a trainer when she was killed!”

“Right,” Fraser says. “And perhaps whatever radical steps she’d taken to treat her condition were the same steps that precipitated her murder.”

“Huh.” I stare at Cole McKinnon’s body. “Steps her girlfriend might have known about.”

“Exactly.”

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. I do _not_ need this.” I tap my comm and call for the pathologist and CSI, cursing again when the link doesn’t pick up immediately. Fraser eyes me warily all the while.

“What?” I snap, once the dispatcher’s signed off.

“Nothing.”

I jab a forefinger at the body. “This makes it three Code Ones in a week. Yeah, I’m pissed. What do you expect?”

“Hmm. Three wouldn’t be the normal rate, then?”

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about the Chicago, buddy, but it’s not the murder capital of the galaxy. Muggings, domestics, the occasional stabbing down by the engines, sure, but not this. Not in my patch.”

“There must have been a fourth death, too,” he says quietly. “That of whichever mech was destroyed to facilitate Ms. Almeda’s surgery.”

“Do not—do _not_ wind me up, Fraser. This is not a good day to wind me up.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t do it on purpose.” He crouches and examines Cole McKinnon’s body for himself, pulling something from her lapel. I’d taken it for a bloodstain, but as he turns it over I can see it’s a flower, a rose or something. I scowl at him.

“Hey, don’t touch that, it’s real!”

“I can see that, Ray.”

“I mean it’s _real_ real, from Hydro. I got Stella one of those once. Cost a fortune.”

“Ah, hydroponics. Of course.” Fraser tilts the flower, peering at the cut marks on its stem. “That should have occurred to me. I’ve seen fruit and vegetables for sale but assumed they were imported, hydroponics hardly being the most efficient form of food production off-planet.”

“I guess that’s why they don’t use it much. It’s mostly fungal vats instead, the odd shrimp vat. They can make it taste like whatever you want.” I shrug. “Rich folks like McKinnon, though, they like to buy hydro. It’s evidence, Fraser. Put it back.”

He strokes the petals with a careful finger and tucks the flower back into the vic’s buttonhole. It’s blood red, as bright as his jacket and showier than the pink one I bought Stella. Later, once she’d qualified and started making the big bucks, she used to buy them herself from time to time. Those were just for her, though. I’d kind of stopped figuring in that equation by then.

“So you think Ms. McKinnon was wealthy?” Fraser asks.

“Yeah, look at the size of this place! Cornerball salaries are crazy these days.” I think about Almeda’s old dorm, cramped and dingy in comparison. Whatever she’d earned in her heyday, she’d clearly run through it. McKinnon was the one with the money. Which means…

“Which means we need to find out what else she was spending it on,” Fraser says, reading my thoughts. “We need to follow the money trail. Someone must have paid for Ms. Almeda’s surgery, and her partner is the obvious person to have done so.”

He touches the flower’s petals one last time and then turns away, all business, to examine the rest of the cabin. It’s not until half an hour later, when the place has filled up with Scene of Crime techs and we’re watching them zip the vic into a body bag, that he says, “On Canada, we only have them in summer. Flowers, I mean.”

“Yeah?” I say, trying to sound encouraging, because I’ve been snappish with him and he hasn’t deserved it. He’s got that wistful tone again, the kind I’d try and kiss out of him if the SoC techs weren’t around.

“Yes, all sorts of species. _Saxifraga canadensis_ , _Gentiana borealis_ , dozens of others. Small ones, of course, nothing more than shin height because of the wind, and they would die within hours if picked. You have to be there in person to see them.”

“Sounds neat.” I check the techs are out of earshot and lower my voice. “Look, I gotta go write this up and then I got a shedload of other stuff to do, but d’you wanna stop by my place again later? Like, this evening?”

He looks surprised, taken aback even, and for a moment I wonder whether I’ve fallen into that chasm of misunderstanding again, whether maybe the reason Colonials make sex last so long is that it’s a one-time deal, and asking for more is the most needy, pathetic, goddamn _discourteous_ thing I could have done. Or does he really think “hands off in public” means “hands off altogether”? Because I think I’ve made it pretty obvious that it doesn’t.

Then his expression clears and I catch a flash of pure happiness before his poker face drops back into place. “I’d like that,” he says, tipping his hat a millimeter or so, his version of a jaunty angle. “See you later, then.”

I nod and turn back to the crime scene, trying to hide my grin. We might be winging it here with this whole cultural liaison thing, but hell, I’m enjoying the ride.

 

* * *

 

I wasn’t kidding when I said I had a shedload of stuff to do. Welsh wants instant miracle results on the McKinnon case, as per, so I spin him some bullshit about a burglary gone wrong. It keeps him sweet and I can backtrack later. He must have been hassling the ME’s office too, because the autopsy report is online within hours. No mention of mech parts or any other weirdness, just your garden-variety lethal assault with a blunt object.

Mid afternoon, I take a break from paperwork and go down to the Central Hospital, where a combination of coffee, pastries, and CPD badge-flashing charms some more information out of the transplant coordinator. Apparently Amari Almeda took her own name off the waiting list a year ago, claiming she was putting her faith in holistic medicine and prayers instead.

“Patients do that sometimes,” the coordinator says, between bites of his cinnamon swirl. “I guess it’s one way of checking out. She was back here a few months later, though, asking for a prescription. I thought she looked great, considering, but she said she’d been getting some neurological symptoms.”

“So what did you give her?” I ask.

“Nothing, I’m just the admin. I offered to make her an appointment with her consultant, but she’d had enough of being poked and prodded.” He shrugs. “People have a right to refuse treatment.”

“Uh-huh. So do patients with her condition normally have these neuro-whatsit symptoms?”

“Yeah, some of them, if they live long enough. If the arrhythmias and respiratory failure don’t get them first.” He swallows the last bite of his pastry and wipes his fingers one by one on his napkin. “Sorry, I don’t mean to sound callous. It’s just, they all die, y’know? I’m sorry about her death, I really am. That was a shitty thing to happen. I hope you catch the guy that did it.”

I nod and give him the standard line about doing our utmost. Then I leave him to his admin and head back to the Two-Seven for more research of my own.

First thing I do is call up Mispers, looking for mechs who might have been abducted for parts, but there’s not enough to go on. Or there’s way too much to go on, more like. It happens more than you’d think, people walking out of their lives for no reason the CPD can fathom. Some of them are on first-name terms with the mental health teams, some of them never on anyone’s radar. I could start combing through for links to Almeda, but it’s a long shot and a time-hungry long shot at that. Normally I’d try to sweet-talk Frannie and Elaine into helping, bribe them with match tickets, whatever, but I’m on my own for this one.

I go for the money angle next, pulling up McKinnon’s bank records, salary slips, tax returns, domiciliary listing. The math makes my brain hurt, but after a couple of hours’ crosschecking I’ve found holes in the numbers. McKinnon’s salary outstripped her rent and card purchases by several light-years, so she should have been rolling in cash, invested to the hilt, but there’s no paper trail to show for it. What’s the going rate for illegal, unethical, last-ditch surgery these days? I do the sums again: at least a hundred grand of her income is unaccounted for, maybe two hundred. It’s probably all stashed away in off-Hub tax havens, of course. I gotta stop assuming Fraser’s conspiracy theories are true.

It’s past clocking-off time by now, so I go home, pull up a screen, and dive back into the data.

McKinnon’s bank statements show two main sets of regular payments, both listed as rent. One is to Domiciliary, the other to something called Foxhall Property Ltd. It turns out to be a shell corporation whose only contact details on the Chicago Companies Registry are the name and trading address of a law firm down on Deck 52. Sifting through the listings, I find scores of shell companies registered to the same firm, with only a handful of client names.

I’m so deep in the zone that the knock at my hatch barely registers; someone’s probably been tapping for a while. “Come in,” I say, not looking round. Familiar footsteps approach and Fraser leans over my shoulder.

“Is that Cole McKinnon’s financial data?” he says, switching straight to business mode. “Show me.”

I go back to the first entry and flick through the data linking company to company, payment to payment. “See, Frase, here’s what you do if your partner has a disease that ordinary transplants can’t fix. You buy a miracle cure off of these guys.”

“Hmm,” he says. “Ms. McKinnon did exactly that, I take it? And in return her girlfriend received the body of an abducted mech.”

“Yeah, but after a while she started getting sick again. Karma came back to bite her on the ass.”

He leans closer to the screen, checking the figures. “Any such surgery would experimental at best,” he says. “It would hardly be surprising if the test subject developed immunological complications, especially with a condition such as hers.”

“Whatever. It’s in her brain, so she gets sick. She figures either the shady fuckers lied to her or they’re just plain incompetent—”

“Quite probably both, in the circumstances.”

“Right!” I say. “So she thinks, to hell with it. If she’s gonna die anyway, she might as well go public and take them down with her. So she puts feelers out to Vecchio…”

“But they pre-empt her!” Fraser says, animated now. “They arrange for Ray to be transferred elsewhere, and they use some sort of intimidation tactics to keep Ms. Almeda quiet—”

“But then we start sniffing around, and boom! Almeda winds up dead, her girlfriend winds up dead, and just for a bonus, the CI they paid to get rid of Vecchio’s comm winds up dead too! Triple whammy!”

We stare at each other. I’m grinning, I can’t help it. It’s magic, bouncing ideas between us like this. We’re a duet, a one-two punch.

Fraser blinks and composes his features, and turns back to the screen. “So where did all the money end up?”

“See this law firm here? Their biggest client owns half the casinos on the Vegas. That’s probably where it went. Two hundred grand, give or take, paid in small sums under the radar. Can’t prove it was him, but he does use the same lawyer.”

“The Vegas?” Fraser takes a step back toward the hatch, almost vibrating with impatience. “In that case, we need to get over there before they can tie up any more loose ends!”

“Uh, it’s nine p.m., Fraser, too late for a shuttle. It’s been two months, it can wait another day. Besides, I’d need talk to Welsh about it first.”

“Lieutenant Welsh?” he says. “Is that wise? I’m aware of your regard for him, Ray, and in any other circumstances it would be commendable, but you have to consider that he might be implicated in all of this.”

“I didn’t mean _tell_ him, you idiot, just ask him for a couple of days’ vacation. I can’t go AWOL without drawing attention to myself. And I’m officially Vecchio, so that’s the last thing I should do.”

“Oh. That’s true, I suppose.” Fraser’s shoulders sag by the millimeter or so his perfect deportment allows. “A second Ray Vecchio going missing might well trigger alarm bells.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Frase, no can do. Don’t worry, we got the info, got the names, I just need the time off. I’ll ask Welsh first thing tomorrow, I promise.”

He nods reluctantly.

“C’mere,” I say, leaning closer and tipping his hat back. I kiss him slow and sweet, until he gives in and smiles against my lips.

“I suppose there _are_ other things we might be doing meanwhile,” he murmurs, sliding an arm round my hips.

“Can you wait half an hour? There’s something else I wanna show you first.”

He pulls back. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He shakes his head in bemusement but follows me obediently out of the cabin, straightening his hat as he goes.

I lead him along to the Sector 8 elevator bank. The place we’re heading is twenty-five decks up but not far aft, so the El’s the quickest way. Just past the Central Stadium on Deck 22, I nudge Fraser off the main gangway and down to the far end of a service tunnel. No one’s around, but I double-check that the tunnel is empty before ducking behind the last stanchion, where a hatch that should have been locked lets us into the utilities access.

“You gonna be okay with this?” I ask, shutting the hatch behind us and taking out a screwdriver. “It’s kinda cramped in there. Dark, too. Plus we gotta keep quiet in case anyone’s below.”

Fraser’s smile looks a little forced, but he nods gamely. I unscrew the third panel on the starboard side and stick my head into the ventilation shaft. It’s clear of grids, its steel reinforcing bands forming a natural ladder that’s easy enough to scale for anyone who doesn’t mind heights or tight spaces. I clamber inside and start climbing, with Fraser following right behind me.

Half a dozen meters up, the tube bends through ninety degrees until it’s running horizontally, forcing me to wriggle on my belly for the last few meters of darkness, the metal cool through my t-shirt. The shaft ends abruptly in a circular, downward-facing vent pierced by concentric slits, through which a slight breeze is flowing. Crawling as far forward as I dare, I peer into the waterproofed cabin below.

Fraser squirms up beside me, shoving an accidental elbow in my ribs. “Sorry,” he says, shifting so he’s lying half on his side. The tube’s not quite wide enough for both of us to lie flat.

“S’okay. I did say it’s cramped. Look down there, though.”

He lowers his face to the vent and peeps through the slits. “Oh!” he says, surprised. “A garden!”

“Yeah, I figured you were homesick, so…” I nod down at the landscape, its rock-style substrate lush with hydroponic growth. “It’s private, no entry, but it’s the only planet-y place I could think of.”

Fraser’s ribcage expands against mine as he takes deep breaths of the moist, earthy air flowing up through the vent. “Thank you, Ray, it’s beautiful! And you’re right, my soul does rather wilt in the absence of greenery. Not that the Chicago doesn’t have green-painted paneling in places, but…”

“But it’s not the same.”

“It isn’t, no,” he says. “How did you even know about this place?”

“One of my old dormies went into hydroponics. He got this commission years ago, showed me the planting plans, ventilation system and everything. Said it’d be worth a look once it’d had time to grow.”

“He was certainly right about that. Dormies—would those be rather like siblings?”

“I guess. I dunno.”

“No, I suppose I don’t either.” Fraser wriggles further over the vent, leaning some more of his weight on me for safety. “Did any of your dormies choose law enforcement, like you?”

I laugh. “ _Choose_ it? Do you know how many bios the Chicago PD takes on? I wasn’t even gonna apply, but my dorm-mom pushed me to get through the Grades and then Stella was so proud of me that I couldn’t back down. Stella, she’s my ex.” Fraser’s silent, so I add, “You know what the Grades are, right? You must have them, even on Canada.”

“Well, yes, by law we’re obliged to sit them,” he says slowly, as if he’s picking his words with care, “but as you can imagine, they have very little practical application in a population almost exclusively employed in hunting, fishing, and mining.”

“Huh.” I try to imagine this, but he’s wrong, I can’t. Not really. “You got Mountie-ing too, though. You must need them for that.”

“Technically, yes, there’s a minimum pass mark, but the RCMP is more of a…a calling, one might say. As a career, it has certain obvious disadvantages—”

“Like freezing to death.”

“Like freezing to death, yes, along with other physical dangers and isolation and loneliness. It’s not the easiest of options, all told, so in practice it tends to be open to whoever’s prepared to volunteer.”

“Whoever’s crazy enough, you mean.”

“I suppose I do,” he says, and even in the darkness I can tell he’s smiling.

“Minimum pass mark, huh? I guess that explains how Turnbull got in.”

“Ah, well, he’s from New Newfoundland, Canada’s principal moon. NuNus are—”

“Freaks?” I suggest.

“Outliers,” he says, “even by Colonial standards.”

“Right. So you sent him here to get rid of him.”

Fraser twitches in amusement. “Well, it was felt that an envoy was required for trade purposes, and NuNu’s co-mayors, who also happen to be Constable Turnbull’s aunts, thought they could manage perfectly well without him, so...”

“I knew it, it was a Canadian get-shut job! And people think you guys are nice.”

We lie quiet for a while after that, gazing down at the garden below us. I hold my hand out over the vent with my fingers spread, so I can feel the air coursing between them. It’s like the draft from a Tube capsule when the airlock isn’t sealed right, or like standing next to an air-circ vent cranked up to eleven. Like the wind you’d get on a real planet, maybe.

I tell Fraser this, and he nods. “Something like that,” he says gently, and I know that it’s nothing like that, that I have no clue what his world is like.

“Are those even the same plants?” I ask, starting to feel stupid.

“Certainly they are. They’re not the same species, of course, as the climactic conditions are very different, but there are several familiar genera down there.” He nudges my shoulder. “See that shrub with stems the color of your sleeves? We have a smaller species of the same genus found by the thousand on the tundra. And see the bright blue flowers cascading down the steps? A dwarf form of those is a favorite food of the caribou.”

“Caribou?”

“Yes, and those little asteriform clusters by the fountain, the color of these stars here,” his hand shifts across my back, “bloom all across Yukon when the snow melts.” His fingertips are warm on my shoulder blade, where he’s tracing the spray of yellow dots across the fabric. I’m wearing my old Champions’ Cup t-shirt from a few years ago, the one with the crimson sleeves and bright blue rockets and sparks everywhere—all of it invisible in the darkness of this ventilation shaft, even to a guy with twenty-twenty vision.

“You memorized my _shirt?”_

He clears his throat. “It’s the one you were wearing the day we met. It’s…memorable.”

“I’ve washed it since,” I say defensively.

“I know you have. It’s very fetching.”

“Um…thanks, I guess? I feel…fetched.”

He laughs and leaves his hand where it is, warm through the thin cotton. We go on lying there for a long time after that, jammed side by side in the ventilation tube, watching the bright splashes of color below us swaying in the breeze.

It’s new to me, this sudden dizzy rush of emotion, new and strange. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my share of hook-ups in the past, some of them bigger than Fraser or stronger than him, some with skills he’s never gotten a chance to practice out there in the wilderness. But not one of them could make me feel shaky the way he can with nothing more than a touch on my shoulder. I’m so turned on, I could leave bruises on the metalwork, but I don’t even care that there’s no room to move. I’m happy just lying here like this, sharing my space with him and knowing he’s smiling in the darkness.

 

* * *

 

We do make it back to my cabin eventually. It’s our safe place, our harbor, the one place neither of us has to pretend to be anything we’re not. There’s a whole long list of stuff I’m pretending—undercover ain’t the half of it—and from the relief on Fraser’s face when he locks the hatch behind us, I don’t guess his list is any shorter, but as soon as we’re in here we can bundle all that shit up and chuck it in the corner along with our clothes.

The sex is better now, too. Not that it wasn’t good before—the hot, clumsy kind of good, maybe—but by now Fraser’s more sure of what I want, what I’m okay with. He still asks for permission, but it’s just for confirmation now, a box-ticking exercise, pure courtesy. And I know I can take all the time I want, explore his body, let him explore me. As with everything, he leads with his tongue, licking and biting in places that make me gasp and flinch, places I didn’t even know were ticklish. The inside of my wrist, where the beads of my bracelet skitter over the neural ports as he traces the metal edges. The soft skin behind my ears, dented from years of glasses. The strips of callus under my arms where the shoulder harness rubs. Shifting lower, he trails lines of kisses up my thighs, until I’m trying to pull away from his grip and arch up into it at the same time.

He makes me swear a lot. “Language, Ray,” he says, and makes me swear more.

There’s no macho bullshit here. I can admit to stuff I’d normally knock a guy down for, and when we’re done I can lie sprawled and naked, letting Fraser watch me, letting him laugh at how ridiculous I look or how fine I look or just from pure unthinking happiness, it doesn’t even matter which.

Again, he stays all night. Again, it’s the one thing he doesn’t think he needs permission for.

In the morning, I pick his clothes off the deck and toss them to him. Last night I was too busy stripping them off him to register much about them, apart from that they were kind of tight—tight in a good way—and they needed to come off ASAP, but now I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen him in anything other than his Mountie costume. These are nothing fancy, just plain gray pants and a shirt from last season’s Rockets kit, the sort of stuff normal people wear. The sort of stuff I wear myself.

“You a Rockets fan now?” I say, teasing.

He blushes. “Ah, no, not exactly. To be honest, I barely know the rules of the game. No, I borrowed the shirt from Turnbull, who it appears has become something of an enthusiast. I thought it might help me to blend in, should any of your neighbors happen to notice me arriving.”

“Fraser, my neighbors don’t give a rat’s ass which team you follow.”

He pulls the pants on, frowning at their creases. “Well, no, I don’t suppose they do, but I thought it might be best to try and pass for a local, as far as was practicable.”

The idea of him fitting in anywhere but Freak Rock, Outer Colonies, makes me smile. The idea of him feeling bad about it doesn’t.

“Has someone been giving you shit about being a Colonial? ’Cause it’s not okay for them to do that, Frase. You can’t let people push you around like that.”

He gives me a wry look. “You yourself tease me about it all the time, as did your namesake.”

“Yeah, but him and me, we’re your buddies, we’re your good and trusted friends, so we get a free pass. That’s how it works. No one else gets to call you a freak.” I sit up and fish for my own clothes, which have somehow ended up halfway under the bed. “Tell me who’s been hassling you, and I swear to god I’ll shove the words right down their frickin’ throat.”

“That’s…” He hesitates. “That’s actually rather sweet of you, in a regrettably violent way.”

“Yeah, that’s me, all sweetness. So come on, spill the beans. Who’s been giving you shit?”

“Oh, no one in particular, I assure you,” he says, pulling the cornerball shirt over his head and smoothing his hair with a few deft strokes. “I’m merely trying to make things easier for you, since…well, since it seems obvious you’d prefer to keep our liaison discreet.”

I stop halfway through buttoning my pants and stare at him. “Well, yeah, but that’s not because you’re Canadian, you idiot, it’s because I’m mech!”

“You’re…?”

“I mean, I’m supposed to be, right? As far as the neighbors and everyone else on the Chicago knows, I’m a hundred percent certified AI, wires out my ass and everything.”

Fraser hesitates. “So you don’t want anyone to know that we…that you and I…”

I gape at him. “Would _you?_ Bio and mech would be, what, _okay_ on Canada?”

“I, uh, I suppose the question never arises, given the absence of AIs,” he says, which makes no sense, because who the hell hasn’t even thought about it? Fraser, apparently. He bites at his lip for a moment and then asks, “So here on the Hub, there’s no way a human and a mech would…”

“Uh, no!” I snort, and then wave a dismissive hand. “Okay, yeah, technically they _could._ I’m not saying that sort of thing doesn’t happen. Hell, this is the Chicago. Anything you can think of, it happens, and some sicko will pay to watch it, too. But it’s not something you’d wanna go advertizing, right? You wouldn’t broadcast it to the nearest star cluster, ‘Hi, my name’s Benton Fraser, RCMP, and I’m fucking a _mech_.’”

“I see,” he says, turning away and pulling his coat on. He yanks his collar into place so sharply that its stitching creaks. “It would appear there’s a great deal of your culture with which I’m still unfamiliar.”

“Hey, look, I’m not saying—”

“I understand.”

“You don’t understand!” I grab his arm as he reaches for the hatch, but he won’t meet my eyes. How do you explain this stuff to a guy whose entire world is bio, who has no clue how many issues we’re pussyfooting around? It’s easy to be all peace and love and “all men are our brothers, Ray,” when you’ve never had to deal with a single damn person that’s different than you. Seizing his shoulders, I force him to face me. “I’m not saying I agree with it, but it’s just the way things are. Take Frannie or Elaine at work, you think they’d even look at me? Or you—you’re the hottest guy to hit the Two-Seven in, like, ever. Has either of them looked at you? No, because they’re mechs, so for them that would be slumming or something.”

He pulls free of my grasp. “I rather got the impression that those two only had eyes for each other,” he says, surprising a strained laugh out of me.

“Okay, bad example. But take anyone else from Major Crimes, they’re almost all mechs above beat-officer level. Any of them even noticed you, apart from me?”

He opens his mouth as if to deny he’s worth looking at. Then he sighs. “Now that you mention it, no, I suppose they haven’t.”

“Yeah, well, they won’t.”

“Why, are they programmed not to?”

“Jesus, Fraser, you can’t go asking about people’s _programming!”_ I realize I’m gesticulating and lower my voice again. “Look, I don’t know how it works and I’m not gonna ask. Maybe they ignore us on purpose, maybe they’re just not built that way. Either way, don’t even think about it, because it ain’t gonna happen.”

He frowns at me. “I must say I had expected better integration. Perhaps the Android Regulation Act does need revision if these are the results.”

“Nah, it’s not really about the ARA. I mean, yeah, maybe a zillion years ago it would’ve been, but now it’s just…” I pause, scratching at my stubble while I try to find words for what shouldn’t need them. “I guess back then, if a guy couldn’t make it with a real woman and had to go with a machine, people would’ve thought it was gross and skanky and pathetic, right? And if the machine just went along with it, just accepted that’s what it was made for, that would’ve been pathetic too. And no one wants to be pathetic, Fraser. They didn’t then and they don’t now.” I shrug, because I can’t explain it any better than that. “I know he’s a good guy, your buddy Vecchio, I know that. Once we find him, you can ask him about all this shit. All we gotta do is find him.”

Fraser’s jaw tightens, as if he’s wondering whether to bother arguing. Then he turns away and opens the hatch.

“Indeed,” he says, his voice expressionless. “All we have to do is find him.”

 

* * *

 

“Fraser?” Turnbull says blankly, when I stop by the Consulate two hours later. I’ve spoken to Welsh and gotten a few days’ leave, and then waited ages for Fraser to turn up at the station. I’ve doubled back to my cabin twice, and the Consulate is the only other place I can think to check.

“You know, _Fraser_ ,” I prompt. “Benton Fraser? Your colleague, Constable Benton Fraser of the RCMP? Tall guy in the, uh…”

Turnbull stares at me. I was about to say “red coat and stupid hat”, but he’s wearing the exact same costume, so…

“Forget it,” I mutter, turning to go.

“Oh, you mean Constable _Fraser_ ,” he says, putting a slightly different emphasis on the “s”. “I’m afraid he’s not here.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

I glare at him, and when that doesn’t get results I step forward, bunching my fists.

“Oh, um, let me think,” he gabbles, screwing his eyes shut. “He told me to tell you that he’s attending the Colonial Mining Federation’s InterHub trade meeting on my behalf, which would account for the fact that he’s not here and I, in fact, _am_ here. As you can see.” He pauses. “Sir.”

“The InterHub trade meeting. Right. Would that be taking place on the Vegas, by any chance?”

“Why, yes, it would, sir, and may I commend you on your excellent knowledge of Colonial Mining Federation scheduling?”

I shake my head and turn away, back towards the Tube. I should have seen this coming. Fraser has access to whatever diplomatic vessels he wants. He doesn’t need me. Except that he _does_ need me. He’s going to get himself killed if I don’t stop him, and he’ll probably get Vecchio killed into the bargain.

There’s no time to waste on Welsh. Instead I head for CPD HQ, a big-assed block on Deck Fifteen, all shiny chrome and motivational posters. Sam Franklin’s secretary is at her desk and tries to get in my way, but I dodge past her and barge into Sam’s office before I can think better of it.

“Hey, Sam, it’s me.” I slam the hatch shut behind me and lower my voice. “I need a favor, a big one. You know that other guy—the other, uh, beam of sunshine?”

Sam pushes his screen away, nodding reluctantly.

“I got this buddy who’s gone looking for him,” I continue, “and he’s gonna screw things up for everyone if I don’t get there first. I’m serious, you gotta help me out here or we’re all in the shitter.”

Sam’s on his feet already, scowling and reaching for the hatch.

“Wait, look, I won’t blow his cover, I swear!” I say, before he can hustle me out. “I’ll jump in, jump out and we’re done. All I need’s a name, the guy’s handler or whatever. Just something to keep my buddy quiet, to prove it’s all square.”

Sam yanks down the blinds one by one and crowds me into the far corner. “This your first UC gig, Ray?” he growls, his breath hot on my face. “This a _game_ to you?”

I stand my ground with all the bravado I got. I can be a cocky little shit when I want to be. “You know it’s not,” I say. “And you know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”

He’s the first to blink. He exhales hard and looks away, staring into space for a long time. “Okay,” he says at last, stepping back. “One look. You get one look, and that’s only because you’re you. You go in, you drop a bunch of coins in the slot machines like a good little tourist, you don’t even think of going near the guys in the thousand-dollar suits, and you come home again with your mouth zipped shut. Got it?”

“Yeah,” I say, relieved. I knew I could count on him. “Thanks, buddy, I owe you. So where’s he at?”

Sam sits back down at his desk and taps his screen, frowning. “I got someone who can take you out there. Don’t ask questions, don’t get smart with her, or she’ll kick your ass. Now get lost. I don’t wanna see you again till you’re someone else, understood?”

 

* * *

 

I’ve dreamed of spaceflight since I was a kid. I used to lie awake imagining how I’d climb into that bulky spacesuit and click the helmet into place, hear the whoosh of the airlock, my breath loud in my ears as I checked my vitals on the visor telemetry, my stomach lurching as we dropped into zero-g.

It’s nothing like that, of course. Everything’s changed since the holos I watched as a kid. The module we go out to the Vegas in does have an airlock, and we have to wait while it pressurizes, but that’s as dramatic as it gets. Welsh’s contact, a haulage contractor called Iskandar, turns up in shorts and t-shirt and waves me through with a grunt. She’s not done loading the cargo until late afternoon, so Fraser’s had most of a day’s start on me by the time we take off.

Iskandar’s scowl makes it clear from the get-go that my job is to stay in the flight pod, out of her way. An hour into the trip, she emerges from the cockpit and kicks back in the pod’s forcefield hammock, ignoring me with fierce concentration. I slouch further down in the opposite corner, trying to make myself invisible. It sucks how similar to my own cabin it is in here. I wanted adventure, and instead I got holos, Cube, and full standard gravity.

Worst thing is, there’s no porthole, no mileage countdown, nothing to prove we’re even making progress. For a while I clock-watch, wondering how much trouble Fraser will have gotten himself into by now, but twenty-four hours of enforced idleness puts a dent in my concern. I just want to get the hell out of here.

The docking process when we reach the Vegas is no jazzier than the rest of the flight. Iskandar still won’t let me in the cockpit, so I can’t watch the approach. All I get is the noise and sensation: the weird backward pull as the module decelerates and the muffled thumps as it touches down in the docking bay. Once it’s safely landed, she herds me into the module’s airlock and seals its inner hatch behind us. I got so bored during the flight that I watched the entire safety holo, so at least I know what we’re waiting for. I even know where the life jackets are, in the wildly unlikely event of a landing on water. That hissing sound, that’s just the airlock equilibrating with the docking bay pressure.

It takes forever before Iskandar unlocks the outer hatch and gestures for me to descend ahead of her into the bay. Beyond the bay’s access portal is a long corridor lined with identikit beige cladding, leading down at a gentle slope into the Vegas’ docking complex. It looks exactly like the Chicago, but who cares? It’s officially foreign territory, the first time I’ve ever set foot anywhere but home. I straighten my shoulders and step over the threshold.

 

* * *

 

Turns out it’s not exactly like the Chicago. Just past the portal, two guys with stun-guns are waiting for me.

“Fuck,” I mutter, freezing in place. I tense up to fight, but then someone presses a muzzle to my back and I know it’s too late. Raising my hands, I turn round warily.

“Too bad, kid,” Iskandar says, extracting my weapon from its holster and sticking it in her belt. “You could have been useful.” They’re the first words she’s said to me all day.

I don’t bother replying. I’m shooting glances either side, still hoping to make a run for it. I could probably take her in a fair fight, but it’s three against one and something tells me they’re not gonna play fair.

They don’t. I manage to kick the bearded guy’s legs from under him and head-butt the dreadlocked guy in the chest before they knock me down, though, so I figure it’s worth it. They drag me to my feet and handcuff me for good measure before marching me onwards. The module has been docked at the edge of the distribution sector, all industrial-size hangars and vast storage decks, and we pass through several without pausing. I spot a few techs and longshoremen busy in the distance, but I can’t yell for help with a gun stuck in my back.

Eventually we reach an office deep in the docking complex, some kind of shipping company from the looks of it. Iskandar shoves me down to the deck, and we wait some more, I’m guessing for someone high enough in the food chain to make an actual decision. Half an hour later the top predator turns up: a slim, balding man, oozing money through his expensive suit. He glances at me with minimal interest and zero recognition.

“Put him with the other one,” he says, and lopes off again, his bodyguards following a discreet couple of meters behind.

Iskandar heads back to her module without a word, while Bearded Guy and Dreadlocks march me down another series of gangways. Pushing open the hatch to a tiny cubbyhole of a cabin, they shove me in and kick me to the deck. There’s someone huddled there in the darkness already, and I know who it is even before I recognize his familiar soap-scrubbed scent or make out his crumpled Mountie costume. I collide hard with his shoulder as I fall, and he lifts his head, meeting my eyes for a split second before looking away. He doesn’t move, doesn’t try to untangle his legs from mine, but I swear I can hear his heart beating double-time, echoing off the bulkheads almost as loud as mine. I’m so relieved to see him, I’m not sure what I want to do first, hug him or kick him in the head, so I follow his lead and ignore him instead.

The guards step over us, reaching to cuff me to the air-circ pipe. They wedge a bucket into the corner—I don’t want to think about why—and go out, slamming the hatch behind them.

Fraser waits until he’s sure we’re alone before raising his head again.

“Ray,” he says, his voice scratchy. “Are you okay? I…I’m afraid I—”

“Fucked up? Yeah, you did. Big time.” I shuffle round, getting my legs under me and tugging my cuffs along the pipe until I can rest against the bulkhead beside him. “I did too, though. Turns out you were right about Franklin.”

He takes a shaky breath and leans into me a little, like he’s relieved to see me too. There’s a fresh bruise across his cheek and dark smudges of exhaustion around his eyes. “Sam Franklin?” he says. “He sent you here?”

“Yup. His people grabbed me right off of the module.”

“Ah.” He pulls at the chain of his own cuffs, trying to sit up straighter. “I suppose there’s no point asking whether you’ve found any trace of Ray, then.”

“What, you haven’t seen him?”

He looks puzzled. “No, have you?”

I laugh, a nasty kind of laugh. “Who d’you think got me locked in here? I just saw him, ten minutes ago! He’s with them, he’s with the bad guys!”

Fraser frowns, the shadows under his eyes deepening. “I…I don’t think that’s very likely, Ray. It’s an understandable confusion, though. After all, you’ve never met him, and your eyesight isn’t the sharpest.”

“Fuck off, I’m not blind, and I’ve seen a million holos. It was him, and he said ‘Put him with the other one’, which means he knows you’re here too.”

Fraser’s quiet for a while, the only sound the clinking of his chain as he fidgets with it. “Well, we knew he was working undercover,” he says at last. “He’ll be figuring out how best to extricate us. We’d better prepare ourselves for—”

“He’s not your buddy, okay?” I snap. “We got played. I’m sorry, it sucks, but he’s not your buddy and he’s not about to come riding to your rescue like some knight in a fairy tale.”

Fraser contorts so he can rub his eyebrow on his shoulder. “I know you’re upset about Franklin, Ray, but—”

“I’m not fucking _upset!_ Franklin’s dirty, end of story. I’m not gonna stick my head in the sand and say, hey, he’s a great guy, he’s gonna _extricate_ us any minute. Fuck that. We’re on our own here.”

There’s silence again for a while. I shift on my haunches, the bracelets digging painfully into my forearms. I can still remember the first time I ever got cuffed: Sam in an interrogation room, joking around, pretending he’d lost the keys. He fought so hard to get me accepted in the CPD, kept telling the others that, yeah, maybe his new bio rookie couldn’t bench-press as much as them, couldn’t beat them at chess, but the job wasn’t a chess game, was it? “There’s a place on the force for intuition and lateral thinking,” he kept saying. “Give the kid a chance.”

I sniff hard and try to scratch my nose on my knee. Fraser twitches as if he’d like to scratch it for me but thinks I might bite.

“I bet Vecchio’s been in on it from the start,” I say. “If Sam’s dirty, anyone could be. Either that or they’ve messed with his programming. If they can do full-body transplants, they can probably rewire the hell out of a mech, get him to do whatever they want.”

Fraser’s shaking his head. “You have to trust him, Ray.”

“Why? Because he’s CPD? Because I read his file? I don’t know him from Adam!”

“Then you have to trust _me_.”

That really pisses me off. I’ve had it up to here with people telling me what to do.

“Yeah?” I say, leaning as far round as the cuffs will let me, getting right in his face. “Why should I? I don’t know you either!”

He flinches as if I’ve punched him, but it’s true, I _don’t_ know him. I know how to make him laugh, how to make him gasp and pant and cry out my name, but that doesn’t mean I _know_ him. Why should I trust him? Because he happens to have an honest face? Because of the hope and pain in those wide blue eyes?

“Because if I have to,” he says softly, “I’ll kill Ray myself.”

 

* * *

 

So here’s what I know and the bad guys don’t: Fraser’s real bendy. Like, hyper-bendy. Pretzels have nothing on him. He’s real dexterous, too. If it’d been me restraining him, I’d never have left his ankles free.

It takes a bit of contortion, but eventually he gets one of his feet twisted up high enough for me to reach his bootlaces with my mouth. Gripping the bow in my teeth, I chew and yank at it until it comes undone. Then I pull the laces loose, eyelet by eyelet. Fraser tugs and kicks at his heel with his other foot, and at last his boot comes flying off, hitting the opposite bulkhead with an echoing clang.

“Oops,” he mutters. We crouch motionless and silent for a while, until we’re sure no one’s coming. Then he glances at me apologetically, wiggling his sock-clad foot.

“Ah, come on, Frase!” I protest.

“Sorry, but I need my toes free.”

“Fine, but you _owe_ me.” Bending low again, I take a bite of the clammy wool and tug it sideways, peeling it off his foot. Then I cough hard and spit onto the deck. Even the cleanest skin tastes of ripe Camembert after a couple of days trapped in Mountie boots. At least he can unpeel his other boot and sock himself now that he’s got one foot free. Like I said, he’s real dexterous. It only takes him half a minute of picking at the second boot with his toes before he’s extracted the lace.

“How do you even _do_ that?” I ask, watching him twist the final length from the eyelets.

“Long hours of practice.” He notices my incredulous look. “Well, you never know when a length of string might come in handy.”

“With no hands?”

“Exactly, with no hands. As my father used to say, ‘Don’t…’” He hesitates, the bootlace still dangling from his toes. “No, wait, it was ‘Always…’ Well, I forget precisely what he said, but it was definitely something to do with practice.”

He tucks his bare feet beneath him, and we sit and wait. There aren’t any screens in here, so it’s impossible to tell how much time’s passing. Back on the Chicago I would have known from the number of Tube capsules slamming past, but I’m not familiar with the schedule here. I’m getting hungry, but that doesn’t mean much.

At some point—maybe it’s evening, maybe it’s night—I’m woken from disjointed dreams by the sound of footsteps approaching in the gangway outside. I nudge Fraser awake and we shift carefully, trying to loosen our aching muscles. The hatch creaks open, letting in a shaft of light, and Bearded Guy steps into the cubbyhole. He’s on his own. Fraser tilts his head very slightly and I nod back.

“Got your supper here,” Bearded Guy says, fumbling in his bag for a ration pack. “You better—”

The rest of his words are cut off with a gasp as I kick out hard, tripping him up. He stumbles and falls, slamming into the bulkhead.

“Get him!” I hiss, straining uselessly against my cuffs. Fraser’s legs flail, his bare feet weirdly luminous in the light from the gangway, his bootlace a dark strip held taut between his toes. He twists and jerks, blocking my view of what he’s doing.

There’s another gasp from Bearded Guy, and then silence for several long seconds. His wide-flung arms drum briefly against the decking before falling still. Fraser grunts and jerks his legs backward, and I realize he’s pulling the lace even tighter round the guy’s throat.

“Uh, Frase?” I whisper. “I think you got him.”

Fraser is silent, his body rigid with effort. No sound from Bearded Guy. He’s still breathing, I think, but he must have passed out.

“Fraser! Time to let go!”

Fraser blinks slowly and relaxes at last. “Right you are, Ray.” Dropping the lace, he skims a foot over the guy’s torso, poking at his clothing. There’s a jingling of metal as the handcuff keys fall from the guy’s pocket.

“Aha! Jackpot,” Fraser mutters. He does his pretzel thing again, twisting round with the key gripped between his toes and wiggling it until he’s gotten my cuffs unlocked. It feels like magic to have my hands free. I rub them, getting the circulation back, and undo Fraser’s cuffs in return. A hurried search of the guard’s remaining pockets scores me an even better prize: a shuttle passkey whose holo shimmers into life, displaying its address. _Dock 727, sector D_. Fraser secures the guard to the air-circ pipe and looks up at me, his eyes bright.

“Ready?” I say.

In answer, he pulls me close and kisses me, laughing. Then he shoves the hatch open and takes off, heading left towards the docking complex. I sprint after him, trying to keep up.

At the first corner he slows a fraction, glancing back at me.

“Go, go!” I pant, holding out the shuttle passkey. “Get the engines fired up!”

He takes it and runs off again. I chase after him, following the pounding of his footsteps as they echo down the gangway. I can make out sounds of pursuit behind me too, but they’re a long way back and I’m almost at the docks. Just a few hundred meters to go.

As I round another corner, a guy side-charges me, almost knocking me down.

“Hey, wait!” he hisses, grabbing me as I skid and stumble. It’s Vecchio, his fancy shirt askew and his face damp with sweat. “Where’s Fraser? Isn’t he with you?”

Ignoring the questions, I seize him in a headlock and punch him to the deck with one blow. He gasps, half-stunned, caught off guard long enough for me to haul him up by the shoulders and ram his head into the bulkhead. I take off again while he’s still crashing to the deck.

I sprint down one long gangway, then another, not looking back. Fraser must be way ahead of me by now, but I know where we’re heading. I can hear footsteps pounding after me again, but I’m running the fastest I’ve ever run in my life, and they’re barely gaining on me.

I find the right sector and race through it, scanning the numbers on either side for bay 727. There, to starboard! Swerving over to it, I find the portal unlocked; Fraser must have gotten here already. I jump through it into the docking bay, and I’m seconds from freedom when someone hurtles through it after me. It’s Vecchio again, flushed and breathless.

“Hey, I said _wait!”_ he gasps.

Spinning round, I charge at him, but he sidesteps me and turns to lever the portal shut behind him, trapping us both in the bay. Fuck it, time for plan B. The shuttle’s ready, and I don’t give a damn if he gets fried by its thrusters. I run to its access ladder and start climbing up to the airlock.

“Fraser!” I shout, hoping he can hear me from the cockpit. “Fraser, gun the engines!”

I’m fast, but Vecchio’s faster, swarming up the ladder after me. I’m at the top and turning to slam the hatch in his face when he grabs me by the ankle.

“Fuck _off!”_ I yell, kicking out at him, but instead of trying to yank me down, he shoves me through into the airlock and jumps in after me.

“I don’t have time for this,” he pants, trying to push past me to the airlock’s inner hatch. “Get out of my way!”

I take a swing at him in reply, but he seizes my fist.

“There was only one guard, right?” he says. “Who d’you think detained the other one? Huh?”

He’s stronger than me but not by much. I feint left and kick out at him again. He blocks me but his reactions are kind of sluggish now, like he’s starting to run low on juice. Something’s wrong with him; mechs don’t have reactions this slow until they’re overdue a recharge. He’s distracted, too, half his attention on the figure who’s just appeared in the docking bay window. It’s Dreadlocked Guy, hammering on the glass and gesticulating wildly at us. He’s yelling as well, the words inaudible through the airtight seal. Whatever Vecchio's done to the bay’s access portal, Dreadlocks can’t open it. As we crane to watch him through the shuttle’s hatchway, he presses something on the docking bay’s control panel, provoking an ominous clunk from the bay’s outer gate, the one leading out into space.

“Oh my god!” Vecchio says, shoving my arm away and scrambling back toward the shuttle’s exit. “Oh my god, he’s going to open the gate!”

Before I can react, there’s a deafening whoosh and I hit the deck hard. The docking bay gate is already open a meter or so and rising fast, the air streaming out through it so violently that it’s knocked me flat like I’ve been hit by a Tube capsule. I try to get to my feet, but there’s no way I can stand up in wind like this. I flail for a handhold, grabbing at nothing as I slide sideways, the vacuum sucking at my limbs. It’s dragging me bodily toward the shuttle’s exit, and I have just enough time to wonder if this is what a hurricane feels like before my legs snag against the rim of the hatch and I slam to a stop. Gasping, I grab the safety bar and wedge myself against it to keep from being torn out. Beside me, Vecchio is scrabbling at the deck, one arm looped desperately around the bracket of the fire extinguisher.

“Shut the hatch!” he shouts at me, his words barely audible as the vacuum snatches them away. “Shut the goddamn hatch!”

The control’s on the other side of the opening. I try to reach across but nearly get my arm snapped off by the sheer battering force of the air rushing through. Fuck that—never going to happen. Turning my face from the howling gale, I dig my fingertips into the paneling joints instead and start hauling my way along the walls toward the airlock’s inner hatch, the one leading into the main cabin.

“Fraser!” I yell, kicking out at Vecchio as he tries to crawl after me. “Hey, Fraser, open the hatch!”

I don’t know if he can hear me. He has to be in there—I can feel the throb of the engines warming up—and he must have seen the bay gate rising, but he probably thinks I’ve sealed the airlock already.

“Fraser? _Fraser!”_

Battling against the wind with every muscle, I pull myself up to the inner hatch. Just as I reach it, its control light flashes green and it slides open. Fraser’s crouching there, and oh god he’s the most beautiful sight in the galaxy, his feet braced against the hatch-frame, the straps of his uniform snapping madly in the wind. As he reaches down for me, his lanyard breaks loose, whipping across my face before streaking out of the shuttle and into the void.

“Ray!” he shouts. “Quick, I can’t…”

I clutch at the rim with both hands and try to swing my feet through the gap, but the wind shoves me back, pushing me off balance. Fraser catches me by the legs, gasping as he’s almost dragged out with me. I yelp and fumble, losing my hold on the hatchway, my arms cartwheeling in space as I tumble sideways, saved only by Fraser’s death-grip around my shins.

“Oh shit, oh shit, don’t let go! Don’t fucking…”

He keeps hold somehow, but the tempest is pulling at me, trying to rip me loose as I sway helplessly in midair. Vecchio is still hauling himself grimly up the bulkhead, but I’m in his way now and he can’t get to the hatch. Reaching out, he grabs my flailing wrist instead.

“Get the fuck off me!” I yell.

“You gotta help me,” he gasps. “I’m a cop, I’m Chicago PD!”

“You fucking liar, I’ll fucking…”

I twist and lash out with my free hand, but he’s still stronger than me and I can’t pull loose. Fraser can’t help me either, not while he’s braced against the hatch, taking all my weight. Vecchio leans out and seizes my other wrist, clamping it in a vice-like grip.

“Fuck _off,”_ I shout, twisting so hard that he loses his foothold on the bulkhead and pitches into the slipstream, saved only by his grip on my wrists. I scream as the jolt goes through me, my tendons wrenched to breaking point by the weight of him. He’s yelling too, now, in words I can just make out.

“Benny! For god’s sake, tell him I’m a cop! _Benny!”_

The howl of the vacuum’s so loud there’s no way Fraser can hear him. Vecchio thrashes around, his legs smashing against the bulkheads, his hands starting to slip down my wrists. He looks up, his face a sweat-streaked mask of fear.

“Please don’t let me die,” he begs me. “Please, _please...”_

I’d gladly let him die. I could let his grip slide off me right now. I could watch him tumble out of the shuttle and into the void, watch as he suffocates slowly out there in the coldness of space. We’re both going to die if I don’t; there’s no way Fraser can hold both of us much longer. But I can hear Fraser’s voice in my head, telling me Vecchio’s clean, asking me to trust him. He’ll never forgive me if I just let go.

I twist my hands round and grab Vecchio’s wrists as tightly as he’s clutching mine.

“Climb!” I yell. “Fucking _climb!”_

He stares wildly at me for a moment, as if I’m not making sense. Then he unclenches one hand, lurches forward, and clamps down again on my elbow. It hurts like hell but I bite down on the pain and keep still, letting him catch his breath. He pants hard and lurches forward again, then again, pulling himself hand over hand up my body until he reaches the hatchway. He hauls himself through it, clambering around Fraser, and wedges himself across the frame so he’s holding Fraser in. I see him slap the controls, and the hatch starts to slide shut.

“No!” I gasp, and then realize he’s reaching out for me. I twist upward, and he grabs my wrist again, hauling with all that’s left of his strength.

“We gotta seal the cabin,” he yells. “Give me your other hand!”

I flex and writhe until I manage to catch his other wrist. He yanks on my arms, Fraser yanks on my legs, and they bring me tumbling through the gap a split-second before the hatch slams down with a sickening crash onto Vecchio’s knees.

For a minute I just lie there, dazed and winded. Someone’s whispering, “Oh god, oh god…”, and I assume it’s Vecchio until I realize it’s me and bite down to silence the words.

Eventually the world stops spinning enough to let me uncurl and pull myself upright. The cabin’s safely sealed and Fraser must have found the control to re-pressurize it because I can breathe okay again. He’s crouching in the corner with Vecchio in his arms, a mess of torn exoprosthesis and crushed endoskeleton. He looks up at me, his eyes wide.

“It’s okay,” he says, his voice shakier than I’ve ever heard it. “All the pieces are here. He’s going to be fine. Can you fly this thing?”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” I say, getting to my feet and scrambling into the cockpit. “Flyboy Ray, that’s me.”

Perching cross-legged in the bucket seat, I spin one-eighty and scan the controls. Every pilot I’ve ever met has been a grade-A asshole, so how hard can this be? There’s a big lever marked “disengage”, so I shove that down, feeling the craft shudder as the fuel and O2 lines cut loose. Then I clutch the central holostick, hit the red button, and instantly get slammed back into my seat by the g-force as the rocket takes off.

Bingo.

We shoot out of the port gate, missing its sensor arm by a millimeter. A last-minute jerk of the holostick sends us swooping under it, and that’s it, we’re streaking through empty airspace. Okay, not completely empty—we have to swerve round a dozen cruisers and freight transports—but they’re lumbering beasts, and the whole world’s turning in slo-mo as we scream past.

Port Control is yammering at us on the radio, ordering us to abort and return to base. I hit mute and push the throttle further into the red. Tracer fire could still bring us down, but I can’t spot any; the Vegas’s guns stay housed and the radar’s clear. A police cruiser arcs round from the forward port, and for a moment my stomach’s in freefall, but we’re light-years faster and there’s no way it can intercept us. Thank god for the freighters; they’re all strewn in its path, so it can’t fire without risking them. I max out the power and in less than thirty seconds we’ve shot out of range.

Damn it, I _knew_ I should have been a pirate.

Once we’re a few klicks past the last of the traffic, I wipe my palms on my thighs and start checking the other controls. They don’t look too tricky. My datastick with the Chicago’s coordinates is hidden deep inside the waistband of my pants and takes me a while to fish out, but the rest is mostly point and shoot, like any flight sim. I spent enough time playing Space Raiders as a kid to figure this shit out. The only difference now is that we’re out of ammo, plus I’m pretty sure we don’t get three lives.

I fix us on the right heading and start scanning the frequencies, my fingers twitching on the holostick, ready to send us ducking and weaving. There’s still no sign of anyone following us, though, and we punch past the Vegas’s territory buoys without pursuit.

After one more check of the radar, I flip the controls to autopilot and climb back into the main cabin. It’s dark in there and strewn with bits of debris from Vecchio’s smashed limbs. Fraser’s still crouched by the airlock, bent over Vecchio’s motionless body with his hands full of wiring.

“Know what you’re doing there, Red?”

He lifts his head. “Ray,” he says, blinking hard. “You’re, uh—yes, I had to do this sort of thing several times on Canada. Wireless facilities and recharge pods are almost unknown there, of course, so we had to rig chargers manually using the wind turbines.”

“Yeah, but not with him all bashed up like that! Mechs’ power cells are in their legs, right?”

“The main ones, yes, but his thoracic batteries should be sufficient to get him online again.”

“Um, you sure you wanna do that?” I ask. “Wake him up in that state, I mean?”

Fraser stares at Vecchio’s mangled legs as if he’s only just noticed them. “Ah. Well, I’m assuming he can override the pain signals, at least until he can get his limbs repaired. All I need is an external power source to hook him up to.”

“Workarounds, huh?” Pulling my belt off, I jam its buckle behind the cover of the cabin’s power node and prize the casing loose.

“Precisely.” Fraser examines the wiring inside and slots a couple of Vecchio’s cords into place. “Thank you, that should do it. His neural tissue’s intact, thank goodness, and the endoskeleton is replaceable. I just need to...hmm...”

Leaving him to fuss over Vecchio’s CPU settings, I buckle my belt back on and sag down against the forward bulkhead, suddenly exhausted. The adrenaline rush must be wearing off. I can see the cockpit’s radar screen from here, reflected in the starboard porthole, an empty square with a green band sweeping across it over and over, and I watch it spinning until I’m half hypnotized.

“Benny?” a voice says, makes me jump. It’s Vecchio, coming back online. His eyes flicker open and he reaches out to Fraser with both arms. “Hey, Benny! I knew you’d come!”

“Of course I came, Ray,” Fraser says, hugging him back.

“You got my message?”

Fraser nods, beaming. “I came as soon as I received it.”

“I knew you would! I would have made it clearer, but I didn’t wanna get you in trouble if anyone was bugging me.”

“I thought that might be the case.” Fraser checks Vecchio’s CPU readouts and clicks his thoracic panel back into place. “You knew you were being set up, then?”

“Yeah, I kinda figured. I didn’t know how, exactly, but I knew there had to be some sort of shady dealings going on, and when Franklin told me I was being sent undercover I smelled a rat. They brought me to the Vegas, made me disappear. Then they tried to reprogram me, so I thought, what the heck? I play along, I get to stay alive. Plus I get enough AV evidence to bring ’em all down.”

Fraser nods. “That sounds like an excellent plan.”

“Yeah, on paper. Not so easy getting out of Dodge when they keep you low on power.” Vecchio grins at him. “So, did I have you fooled? Did you think I was dirty?”

“Of course not!” Fraser says. “It was a very fine act, though. If I hadn’t known you so well…”

“Yeah, yeah. Too well, huh, Benny?”

They laugh as if it’s a private joke, just between the two of them. They sound as fond as long-lost dormies, and it’s completely fucking weird to be sitting here listening to them, forgotten in the shadows beyond their orbit. Not that I’m jealous, ’cause I’m not, and anyway I know they’re not involved, but there’s a strange vibe between them all the same. Like they’re real good buddies and then some, maybe. Like they’re fonder than buddies are supposed to be. If this is Fraser’s experience of mech-bio friendships, no wonder he’s hazy about the boundaries. And wait, am I supposed to have been calling him “Benny” all along? No one told me that. _Fuck._

I crouch lower to the deck, letting my head drop. I’m getting kind of dizzy and my wrists are hurting where Vecchio grabbed hold of them in the airlock. I lift a shaky hand to push the damp hair off my forehead, but it leaves it damper, with beads of sweat dripping down my face. Except it’s not sweat at all; it’s thicker and redder than sweat, and it’s soaking through the cuffs of my shirt.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit...”

I curl sideways, puking quietly onto the deck.

“Ray? Ray!” Fraser’s beside me in an instant, pulling me upright. “Hold still, let me see.” Kneeling in front of me, he pushes my sleeves up, tearing the fabric to the elbows. “It’s all right, it’s just the neural ports. The skin’s torn but I don’t think you’re badly hurt.”

“I’m not?”

“Not unless you’re bleeding anywhere else. Are you?”

“What?”

“Bleeding anywhere else. Try to concentrate, Ray.”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so.” I close my eyes while he runs careful fingertips over my skull and torso. My arms feel weirdly heavy, so I rest them on my knees, keeping my eyes shut. I can’t take the sight of any more blood right now. I feel a gentle pressure on my wrists and then a sharp sting in the left one that makes me yelp.

“Sorry,” Fraser says. “One of your ports is missing entirely and the other one is hanging loose. I think it would be best if I—”

“No!”

“Ray, it will have to be bandaged, at least.” There’s a rustle as he reaches for something. “There are probably some painkillers—”

“No!” I repeat, forcing my eyes open. “No painkillers.”

Fraser tilts his head, the shuttle’s first-aid box ready in his hand. Then he looks down at the bloody mess on my wrists where the track marks used to be. “Understood,” he says quietly. “You’ll need to hold still, though.”

I stare at the cabin wall opposite while he deals with my arms. I don’t want to lose all my butch points in front of Vecchio, who’s eyeing us with open curiosity, but I can’t watch this. I don’t look back until Fraser tosses the bloodied port into the corner with a clatter and taps my knee.

“Squeeze my hands,” he says. “Hard! Harder! That’s good. Your ligaments and nerves seem to be intact, at least.”

I let out a shaky breath and he shuffles closer to me, gripping my knees between his own and cradling my hands in his. We sit there for a while, skin to skin. We’re bio, not mechs; we have to recharge in our own way.

Eventually Vecchio shifts, and Fraser clears his throat.

“Ahem…Ray, allow me to introduce Detective Stanley Raymond Kowalski of the Chicago PD. He’s—he _was_ your official stand-in during your absence.”

Vecchio breaks into a laugh. “You’re kidding! _Him?_ I heard they were bringing someone in, but…”

“He’s a good man,” Fraser says, tightening his hold on me.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t, Fraser.”

I pull away and get to my feet, nodding toward the cockpit. “Uh, I gotta go check on, uh… I’ll be in there, okay?”

As I turn away, I catch Vecchio aiming a mock-punch at Fraser’s shoulder.

“Way to go, Benny, way to go!” he whispers. “You got an actual boyfriend!”

 

* * *

 

When we get back to the Chicago, Vecchio and I take refuge in the Consulate while Fraser goes to find Welsh, the one guy Vecchio swears is clean for sure. I don’t want to let Fraser go on his own, but someone has to carry Vecchio to the Consulate.

“You needn’t be concerned, I have diplomatic immunity,” Fraser says, as if that’ll keep him any safer here than it did on the Vegas. “And technically the Consulate is on Outer Colonies soil, so Franklin and his cronies shouldn’t be able to get at either of you without extradition papers. I believe Constable Turnbull actually keeps a jar of soil on his desk so he can sprinkle it on the threshold at any threat of incursion. Sometimes that man takes things rather literally.”

“Fine, but go straight to Welsh, okay?” I say. “Don’t talk to anyone, don’t trust anyone, just go straight to Welsh.”

He nods and exchanges a look with Vecchio that I can’t interpret. Then he heads off, leaving me to haul Vecchio to the Consulate. I’ve put on a fluorescent tabard and a hard hat I found lying around in the docking port, and they work like magic: nobody bats an eyelid at a workman carrying a damaged mech across the Hub.

Turnbull beams when he answers my knock. “Aha! Welcome back to Canada, gentlemen! Excellent timing—the curling’s just about to start.”

“The what now?” I ask.

“It’s a Colonial sport,” Vecchio says, putting air quotes around the word “sport”. “Fraser made me watch it once. It’s basically a bunch of guys sliding frozen burgers real slowly across a deck made of ice cubes.”

“If you prefer, of course, we could make a start on repairing your legs?” Turnbull offers, taking a screwdriver from his belt pouch.

“Curling,” Vecchio says hurriedly. “Curling is good.”

 

* * *

 

Twenty-four hours of pseudo-sport later, I get the all clear to go home. In the IA-mediated chaos that follows, Welsh somehow finds time to forcibly sign me off work until my wrists heal.

“Don’t even start with me, detective,” he says wearily, when I try to protest. “Just go home. One Vecchio on the warpath is enough for my sanity.”

“Hey, it’s probably a good thing,” I tell Fraser, once we’re safely back in my cabin. “The case has gotta be done by the book or it won’t stand. Me, I’d just wanna kick ’em in the tes—”

“Ray!”

“—testimony. What?”

He narrows his eyes at me, mock-stern. Turns out Vecchio’s good at all that legal shit, anyway. Good at the paperwork, better than me. He’s a smooth talker, too. Now that he’s repaired, he’s down at the Two-Seven or CPD HQ twenty-four-seven, like it gives him a buzz. Sometimes Fraser’s there with him, giving statements or helping with the form filling. When he’s gone, I flip my bed up and run on the treadmill until I’m too tired to think. I try sparring with the forcefield a couple of times, but the gloves make my wrists bleed, so I go back to running. It’s enough to keep my mind good and blank.

Fraser’s always tired and saddened when he comes back from a hard day’s casework. I can make him forget for a while, sure, but it doesn’t stop him turning quiet and thoughtful again afterwards.

“Whatcha thinking about?” I ask him one time, when the cabin’s screens have long since gone night-dim and he’s lying silent but wakeful, the rise and fall of his chest not yet smoothed out into sleep.

He sighs and stretches his legs out under mine before he replies. “I suppose it was naïve of me,” he says at last, “but I didn’t expect mechs to be capable of murdering their own kind, especially for nothing more than material gain.”

I curl my fingers gently over his biceps, stroking up and down, feeling where the vaccination scar pits the skin. I’m never going to get my head around a planet so alien that it still uses inoculation. “Mechs are just people, Frase,” I say. “People suck.”

“Hmm, perhaps.” He stills my hand and turns over so he’s lying chest-to-back with me, one arm curled round me to keep us on the bed. “And yet I find hope remains. Although maybe that’s just a product of my programming.”

I don’t say anything, just tuck my chin lower to give him room to breathe. It’s a long time before he finally sleeps. I lie awake into the small hours, feeling him twitch as he dreams of snow and ice and home.

Normally I’m a pushy guy. I want something, I go for it. But Fraser’s gotten what he came here for, and I know he won’t stay just for me. Half of me wants to ask, “Will you miss this? Will you miss _me?_ ”, just to make him say it out loud. There’s no point, though. Back at the Consulate, his stuff’s already packed.

 

* * *

 

The Cube in the Two-Seven’s break room hasn’t been fixed in my absence. Its holo has gone hazy again, the images so blurred I can’t figure out which one’s supposed to be the coffee cup. I call up the A-Z menu instead and tap “C”, cursing when it offers me a choice of crackers, coleslaw, or chicken soup. Kicking the machine cheers me up but doesn’t change its options, so I give in and choose number three. When it spits out a mug of reddish goop instead, I’m not even surprised, because that’s my life all over. Sometimes the universe doesn’t give you what you ask for. Sometimes you just gotta take the tomato soup.

I sit down at the bench, cupping my fingers round the mug and taking a tentative sip. Hey, at least it’s warm. I fish out my comm and open the update on Vecchio’s case. Another lab’s been raided overnight, this time on Titan, with six more suspects arrested. That makes thirty-one so far, with investigations still ongoing on a dozen Hubs. Vecchio’s insider status has gotten us leads into the gang’s activities way beyond that, too—drug dealing, extortion, money laundering, and a bunch of other stuff. Enough to keep him busy for years.

Footsteps break my train of thought, and I look up to see the man himself stepping through the hatchway, carrying a rucksack with a bulky, fur-lined coat strapped to it. He lowers the bag to the table and sits across from me.

“You’re back, then,” he says.

“Yup. Just done my Fitness for Work interview. I’m resuming tomorrow.”

He tips his head a little, eyeing me as if I’m some fascinating alien specimen. “You sure you wanna do that?”

“It beats sitting around, so yeah.”

He nods as if that’s exactly the level of idiocy he was expecting from me. For a while he sits silently, watching me sip my soup. “I hear Fraser’s taking the shuttle home this morning,” he says eventually.

“Yup.”

“You know, the weather on Canada’s not as bad as they make out. Not for a bio, anyway. You ever heard of something called ‘spring’?”

“Of course I have! This long dealing with Fraser, you think I’m not clued up on years and seasons and all that planetary rotation-type shit?” I twirl a forefinger in the air. “Spring’s the one where, uh, where…”

“Where the weather warms up and all the plants bloom,” Vecchio says. “Fraser took me to see it, did he tell you that, too? A whole sea of flowers right to the horizon, in every color of the rainbow. The prettiest thing you ever saw, except maybe him.” He pulls out a screen, tapping it until it fills with figures and dates. “I looked it up this morning, did the math. On his island, on Yukon, the winter’s just about over. Spring’s about to start.”

Spring, when all the plants bloom. I think of Fraser standing by himself in the sea of flowers, his face lit up the way it always is when he speaks of home. Of him telling me his job was a calling, self-imposed, open to anyone crazy enough to volunteer. Of him alone in the shuttle for two months, and then alone for good. Of how he’s never once said he’ll miss me. Never in words, anyway.

Vecchio snorts, breaking into my thoughts. “You’re not that dumb, Kowalski. You may be short a circuit or two, but you’re not _stupid_.” He tosses a Tube token onto the table. “If you take the Cobalt line, you can still catch him. Oh, and Turnbull sent you these. Says he’s not going to need them anymore.”

I stare at the token and the rucksack of planet-side clothes. There’s a whole world out there, if I want it, if I can hack it.

Flyboy Ray, that’s me. I grab them and shove my chair back.

“Uh, thanks,” I say, swinging the bag onto my shoulder.

“No problem. Give Fraser my love. And, Kowalski?”

I look back. “Yeah?”

“Try and keep him out of trouble.”

I nod. Then I turn and climb out through the hatchway, and I _run_.

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Mounties in Spaaace (Art for Feroxargentea's Story)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16161251) by [mific](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mific/pseuds/mific)




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